What Happened to the Real Time Strategy Genre?(probablydance.com)
probablydance.com
What Happened to the Real Time Strategy Genre?
https://probablydance.com/2019/09/11/what-happened-to-the-real-time-strategy-genre/
213 comments
You might be excited then by Command & Conquer Remastered: https://www.ea.com/news/details-command-and-conquer-remaster.... We're working with the community and regularly updating it on /r/commandandconquer (ie https://www.reddit.com/r/commandandconquer/comments/ct1oz8/r...).
What year is that press release from? Is this a game that is out now, did it come out 5 years ago? Is it 2-3 years out from now?
Pretty sure the press release is from the end of 2018. The game is still in development and you can follow along with development updates on the subreddit. Can’t comment on the timeline but it’s making exciting progress and I can’t wait to play it when it’s released (I’m tangentially involved on the EA/publisher side).
Thanks. It would have been really awesome if the page mentioned that, too.
Oh wow I had no idea this was in progress. I loved playing Generals online back in ~2003-2005, I can't wait :D
This may be unpopular, but I enjoyed the entire C&C run right to the very end. This includes the first-person shooter stint along with the "mobile MCV" stint.
Kane as a character holds a place in my heart and memory, as does Tiberium. Soundtracks and cut scenes were great too.
May I enjoy this block of Memory Lane as much as I am able.
Kane as a character holds a place in my heart and memory, as does Tiberium. Soundtracks and cut scenes were great too.
May I enjoy this block of Memory Lane as much as I am able.
That FPS was C&C: Renegade, and I absolutely enjoyed it too. It had all the cheesy dialogue and cliché elements that kinda gave C&C an 80s action movie flick flair, and I was really disappointed that it wasn't so successful. I think that the multiplayer parts weren't really refined enough to make it a hit... there was too much "base-building-components" for an MP game, I think they should've went with a "Battlefield 1942"-style of gameplay... holy crap, now that would've been awesome! EDIT: They were released around the same time, so there wasn't any blueprint for the BF1942 style of gameplay around at the time. I think making vehicles spawn for everyone and not tying it to your success is part of what made BF1942 so popular in the day.
Of all the RTS games from C&C, RA2 was my favorite. Tiberium Sun was just a stone throw before my time, so when I played it, I was missing all the new elements from RA2. It's no fault of TS, just that I have already been "spoilt" by that time...
Tiberium Wars was also pretty nice, though I only played some LAN skirmishes with friends, never the campaign. But from the looks of things, it was the last "real" RTS in the C&C series. The latest two RTS installments, RA3 and the last Tiberium one, already forgot what it's called, were just trash, IMHO. In the latter, the publisher (EA?) was obviously trying to kill two birds with one stone, i.e. make a game for both PC and mobile markets, and C&C was the guinea pig brought in. Obviously, the publisher had no idea what C&C is about and where its true value lies. That's some pretty bad management, actually, but that publisher is known for treating their consumers like replaceable goods, completely neglecting any artistic value a game might have and the therefore resulting fan-base/community like consumer-behaviour.
Of all the RTS games from C&C, RA2 was my favorite. Tiberium Sun was just a stone throw before my time, so when I played it, I was missing all the new elements from RA2. It's no fault of TS, just that I have already been "spoilt" by that time...
Tiberium Wars was also pretty nice, though I only played some LAN skirmishes with friends, never the campaign. But from the looks of things, it was the last "real" RTS in the C&C series. The latest two RTS installments, RA3 and the last Tiberium one, already forgot what it's called, were just trash, IMHO. In the latter, the publisher (EA?) was obviously trying to kill two birds with one stone, i.e. make a game for both PC and mobile markets, and C&C was the guinea pig brought in. Obviously, the publisher had no idea what C&C is about and where its true value lies. That's some pretty bad management, actually, but that publisher is known for treating their consumers like replaceable goods, completely neglecting any artistic value a game might have and the therefore resulting fan-base/community like consumer-behaviour.
I actually remember very much liking the FPS version.
I loved Generals the most, especially for it's rock paper scissors system where every unit, including the most powerfull and armored ones, had a few it was vulnerable against.
But they made it too realistic so the gameplay and units were really slow so games can get long and boring after a while.
But they made it too realistic so the gameplay and units were really slow so games can get long and boring after a while.
I only played RTS for single player. That is also how I started playing it since Dune II in 1993 as my first (I bought and played C&C, RA, WC2, WC3 when they were released).
What happened is that players have become better, better, better. Same as in WoW. It is due to documentation and theorycrafting being more widely available.
That, and the MOBA genre, is what happened to RTS. Multi-player game is also more difficult to pirate, and allows for a cash shop due to vanity items. Means RIP single player. And multi-player RTS is very competitive ie. not casual-friendly. It is not forgiving either.
What happened is that players have become better, better, better. Same as in WoW. It is due to documentation and theorycrafting being more widely available.
That, and the MOBA genre, is what happened to RTS. Multi-player game is also more difficult to pirate, and allows for a cash shop due to vanity items. Means RIP single player. And multi-player RTS is very competitive ie. not casual-friendly. It is not forgiving either.
Come play starcraft remastered. I've been playing fastest map, BGH, and even some ladder, it's super fun! I feel badly as there are many newer players that I sort of crush, but that's always been custom games. Ladder matches, well I'm the n00b there and I usually lose 80% of those.
If nothing else I feel C&C has remained popular in the internet zeitgeist. The series is very ”meme-able”, especially Red Alert and Generals due to their quirkiness of geopolitical issues that have always remained hot topics to a western fanbase (Russia, China and the Middle East).
Red Alert 2 was great. I loved the campy live-action cut-scenes.
You can install called rusted warfare, its same like C&C generals but more heavy vehicle.
Give it a try both Mobile and pc can install it a.k.a cross platform
Give it a try both Mobile and pc can install it a.k.a cross platform
I can't personally vouch for the game, but it looks worth a try and describes itself as:
> Rusted Warfare is an fully featured RTS inspired by classic real-time strategy games such as Total Annihilation and Command and Conquer.
> A pure RTS with no microtransactions and no DRM, Online and offline multiplayer over wifi and mobile networks
and is rated 4.8 in the android store. As someone who has trouble finding games that aren't shitware in app stores, this looks genuinely worth looking into and on topic.
> Rusted Warfare is an fully featured RTS inspired by classic real-time strategy games such as Total Annihilation and Command and Conquer.
> A pure RTS with no microtransactions and no DRM, Online and offline multiplayer over wifi and mobile networks
and is rated 4.8 in the android store. As someone who has trouble finding games that aren't shitware in app stores, this looks genuinely worth looking into and on topic.
IMHO, the core series focused too heavily on maximizing the experience for esports, and that spoiled the genre for the mid-range gamers that were its bread and butter.
And still, Dawn of War, Company of Heroes, Supreme Commander, Planetary Annihilation et al were not so long ago.
And OpenRA itself has been somewhat of a success.
BTW, C&C has a Red Alert reboot coming out before too long. It will be classic in design.
And still, Dawn of War, Company of Heroes, Supreme Commander, Planetary Annihilation et al were not so long ago.
And OpenRA itself has been somewhat of a success.
BTW, C&C has a Red Alert reboot coming out before too long. It will be classic in design.
> the core series focused too heavily on maximizing the experience for esports, and that spoiled the genre for the mid-range gamers that were its bread and butter.
Out of curiosity, in what ways in particular did they do this?
Out of curiosity, in what ways in particular did they do this?
Personally, I felt this way about SC2 as compared to SC1.
I think one of the largest changes I noticed was an increase in the hardness of counters as well as an increase in the APM necessary to properly wield certain units.
For the first point, in SC1, if I had suboptimal army composition against my opponent, I would likely lose any battles that ensued unless my tactics were quite superior- but I'd likely due some damage in the process, at least. In contrast, in SC2, it always felt like a failure to properly anticipate army makeup would frequently lead to completely lopsided battles where my force might be completely annihilated without doing measurable damage to the opponent.
This was aggravated by the second point. I'm not a professional player and my APM has never been amazing, and I'm fine with that. But the more complex required army composition put a higher emphasis on APM and in-battle tactics, especially with heterogenous forces and units, like blink stalkers, that really benefit from very high levels of micro. I'll be the first to admit that, when watching replays, the things that skilled players could pull off in SC2 was pretty amazing to see- but that didn't really help my playing experience.
There result was a game that felt significantly more frustrating than SC1, even if my win/loss ratio wasn't actually all that different.
I think one of the largest changes I noticed was an increase in the hardness of counters as well as an increase in the APM necessary to properly wield certain units.
For the first point, in SC1, if I had suboptimal army composition against my opponent, I would likely lose any battles that ensued unless my tactics were quite superior- but I'd likely due some damage in the process, at least. In contrast, in SC2, it always felt like a failure to properly anticipate army makeup would frequently lead to completely lopsided battles where my force might be completely annihilated without doing measurable damage to the opponent.
This was aggravated by the second point. I'm not a professional player and my APM has never been amazing, and I'm fine with that. But the more complex required army composition put a higher emphasis on APM and in-battle tactics, especially with heterogenous forces and units, like blink stalkers, that really benefit from very high levels of micro. I'll be the first to admit that, when watching replays, the things that skilled players could pull off in SC2 was pretty amazing to see- but that didn't really help my playing experience.
There result was a game that felt significantly more frustrating than SC1, even if my win/loss ratio wasn't actually all that different.
That's an interesting view of the situation. I don't think I've ever seen someone say that APM requirements are higher in SC2. Notable enormous APM sinks in SC1 are the unit selection cap, the inability to give orders to multiple factories at a time, and the inability to make workers rally to the mineral line.
Whether the counters are harder, I don't have enough knowledge to say.
Whether the counters are harder, I don't have enough knowledge to say.
Those are different uses of APM than what the parent is talking about. The unit selection cap is kind of a similar thing, but in practice, selecting an entire giant army and attacking with them all toward the same target at once is not competitive. So even without the unit selection cap, to win battles at high levels (even platinum and definetely diamond when I was playing) requires controlling small groups of different units in the right way. It does seem like you can get away with lower average APM for macro, but peak APM during key battles may have more of an impact. But I didn't play enough SC1 to really compare, I just mean that it is at least plausible based on my experience with SC2.
On the other hand, design changes like special attacks like Psionic Storm only triggering for one of the selected units reduced required battle APM in SC2 too. (In SC1, if you had a group of units selected and triggered one of those attacks, all selected units would cast on that location, so you had to select a single one, cast, individually select the next one, cast, ... if you didn't want to waste your charges)
I never got into sc2, but didn't they get rid of muta stacks and dancing dragoons? The silly "can move during weapon cooldown" mechanic of sc1 imho was disastrous for extreme micro requirements as it meant that units could back off in between firing while the unit AI just wants to stand and fight, meaning even the simplest battle requires extreme micro.
I think a significant cause of this has been the simplistic/restrictivee definition of "macro" as "economy." There are other simple/powerful concepts that give a bigger bang for buck---stance, position, etc.
Everything in SC2 is about the RUSH. Turtlers are not welcome.
I put SC2 down and never picked it back up after playing the third timed mission in a row.
Supreme Commander dealt with this by having genuinely large maps and resource flow rather than a fixed amount of resources. If you tried to "rush" someone or go after their resources, you generally ran into units a level higher and got annhilated.
I put SC2 down and never picked it back up after playing the third timed mission in a row.
Supreme Commander dealt with this by having genuinely large maps and resource flow rather than a fixed amount of resources. If you tried to "rush" someone or go after their resources, you generally ran into units a level higher and got annhilated.
RTS as a genre has always favored aggressive play. Even in games that tried to favor defense, like SupCom, turtlers are stills not welcome, and higher level players start aggression quite early. Rarely will a rush downright end the game, but pulling one off correctly will generally put you ahead.
I don't think any RTS game will be able to deal with this naturally, only by adding rules like NR20 or even NR40 can you avoid early aggression and turtle in peace, and even then the winning strategy will always be to expand as aggressively as possible and to defend with units instead of static defenses.
I don't think any RTS game will be able to deal with this naturally, only by adding rules like NR20 or even NR40 can you avoid early aggression and turtle in peace, and even then the winning strategy will always be to expand as aggressively as possible and to defend with units instead of static defenses.
You can turtle in Starcraft and people do it all the time.
People don’t want to play long online games though, so they don’t set up maps with enough resources to play for hours.
People don’t want to play long online games though, so they don’t set up maps with enough resources to play for hours.
> IMHO, the core series focused too heavily on maximizing the experience for esports
I would argue that they bifurcated into "optimized for esports" and "optimized for whale revenue".
I have played quite a few RTS-like games on mobile which were cool and neat and it was fun to optimize for not spending money. Of course, when whales get beat by players with skill, the whales get angry. So, the games optimize out skill except at the pro levels--which very quickly makes for a really crappy game experience for the rank and file.
> And still, Dawn of War, Company of Heroes, Supreme Commander, Planetary Annihilation et al were not so long ago.
Planetary Annihilation is an abomination that does not belong in that list. And PA is a prime example of trying to optimize for e-sports and forgetting that you need a decent game at the core.
I would argue that they bifurcated into "optimized for esports" and "optimized for whale revenue".
I have played quite a few RTS-like games on mobile which were cool and neat and it was fun to optimize for not spending money. Of course, when whales get beat by players with skill, the whales get angry. So, the games optimize out skill except at the pro levels--which very quickly makes for a really crappy game experience for the rank and file.
> And still, Dawn of War, Company of Heroes, Supreme Commander, Planetary Annihilation et al were not so long ago.
Planetary Annihilation is an abomination that does not belong in that list. And PA is a prime example of trying to optimize for e-sports and forgetting that you need a decent game at the core.
You seen to either get games where the multiplayer scene is non-existent, or hyper competitive like SC2, where you feel a bit brutalized.
One reason I think I was drawn to the warcraft/starcraft custom games when I was younger was that it just seemed too much effort (and kind of tedious) to get "good" at the main game. Goofing about with strange maps seemed more attractive.
One reason I think I was drawn to the warcraft/starcraft custom games when I was younger was that it just seemed too much effort (and kind of tedious) to get "good" at the main game. Goofing about with strange maps seemed more attractive.
Fun fact. When Blizzard was working on match making for SC2 they found they’d made it too good. That you’d consistently get matched with someone so close to your level that each game would be completely draining. They found they needed to widen the standard deviation so that some games felt like a cake walk and other times you just got stomped. What I don’t know is how much of the change was due to direct player feedback, and how much of it was simply trying to maximize player session retention.
I suspect I’m quoting a post I read on gamasutra. Very good site for those interested in game industry anecdotes.
I suspect I’m quoting a post I read on gamasutra. Very good site for those interested in game industry anecdotes.
Check out the SC2 arcade and co-op missions. They perfectly target the 'mid-core' strategy gamer and Blizzard has pushed a lot of content into them over the past years. I would not be surprised if it dominates the normal ladder in hours played, just like the old Brood War UMS maps.
Probably a strong reason why there isn't much competition - why build a new game, when you can weave less competitive mechanics on top of an existing engine and game universe that already has fans?
Probably a strong reason why there isn't much competition - why build a new game, when you can weave less competitive mechanics on top of an existing engine and game universe that already has fans?
That is the main reason I liked Total Annihilation, you could be decent with only some practice, and the scene wasn't hypercompetitive.
> Total Annihilation
IMHO best strategy game! Good old days...
IMHO best strategy game! Good old days...
Warcraft 3 Remastered is coming quite soon, supporting all old custom games! :)
I think also that any competitive game over time will optimize for the experts or be optimized by experts. Fighting games is another example, and a lot of rhythm games are. MMOs that focus on PvP too.
I think some people on reddit argued that this happened with fortnite, and was part of why Apex Legends got so popular; the casuals that liked to pvp got driven out by the experts and tried to start again in a new game.
I think some people on reddit argued that this happened with fortnite, and was part of why Apex Legends got so popular; the casuals that liked to pvp got driven out by the experts and tried to start again in a new game.
>the casuals that liked to pvp got driven out by the experts and tried to start again in a new game.
I find this to be a really interesting point. Many people would ask why they are playing a PvP game in the first place, if they're not interested in competing. I think it makes a lot of sense though, because they're not actually all that interested in playing against players. They just want more of a human-like challenge than what AI can provide. The only option there is to play against other players.
I find this to be a really interesting point. Many people would ask why they are playing a PvP game in the first place, if they're not interested in competing. I think it makes a lot of sense though, because they're not actually all that interested in playing against players. They just want more of a human-like challenge than what AI can provide. The only option there is to play against other players.
A friend and I used to keep in touch by playing RTS Vs the AI while chatting over the mike.
The AI in most games is utterly banal and predictible, and as soon as you go past the easy or medium settings it cheats ruthlessly. Of the big recent ones (StarCraft 2, Company of Heroes 2), it's been a very disappointing experience.
For SC2, it just keeps rushing you, so you end up turtling until the AI runs out of resources.
For CoH2, again it just constantly rushes you with much better stuff that you can afford. CoH2 is actually really annoying as you can never afford anything, and so don't get to play with different units, you're always seem to end up playing the same composition.
What this means is that every game is virtually the same, you're just trying to establish a line, wait until the computer runs out of something (or uses the artifical unit cap for stupid things, effectively running out of an army), and then you roll them.
The only game I remember with a little variance was Dawn of War 2.
Maybe co-op Vs AI is something they just don't care about, but it feels as if it's got worse over time, becoming extremely predictable.
The AI in most games is utterly banal and predictible, and as soon as you go past the easy or medium settings it cheats ruthlessly. Of the big recent ones (StarCraft 2, Company of Heroes 2), it's been a very disappointing experience.
For SC2, it just keeps rushing you, so you end up turtling until the AI runs out of resources.
For CoH2, again it just constantly rushes you with much better stuff that you can afford. CoH2 is actually really annoying as you can never afford anything, and so don't get to play with different units, you're always seem to end up playing the same composition.
What this means is that every game is virtually the same, you're just trying to establish a line, wait until the computer runs out of something (or uses the artifical unit cap for stupid things, effectively running out of an army), and then you roll them.
The only game I remember with a little variance was Dawn of War 2.
Maybe co-op Vs AI is something they just don't care about, but it feels as if it's got worse over time, becoming extremely predictable.
This. My personal favorite game for co-op vs the AI was RUSE - they had several different AI profiles that tended towards certain strategies you could specify, or it would choose at random. However, it really did respond to what units you built and what strategies you chose, building bunkers against a rush and such, or building a ton of anti-tank weapons if it saw you had tanks.
This meant that subterfuge and concealing your intentions was legitimately a huge part of the strategy - if you intentionally let the AI see a lot of a certain kind of unit and then build a different kind of strategy, you'd often see success, but because of the way the AI strategised it could sometimes meet you head on with an unexpected surge because it briefly saw you building up from an unspotted recon unit hiding somewhere.
Ultimately it is relatively easy to defeat with a little experience, but I still several years later occasionally boot it up with a friend to try and beat the hard AI 2v4 - we've only managed a handful of times, and the experience of slowly being whittled down back to back is a great experience to have in a friendship
This meant that subterfuge and concealing your intentions was legitimately a huge part of the strategy - if you intentionally let the AI see a lot of a certain kind of unit and then build a different kind of strategy, you'd often see success, but because of the way the AI strategised it could sometimes meet you head on with an unexpected surge because it briefly saw you building up from an unspotted recon unit hiding somewhere.
Ultimately it is relatively easy to defeat with a little experience, but I still several years later occasionally boot it up with a friend to try and beat the hard AI 2v4 - we've only managed a handful of times, and the experience of slowly being whittled down back to back is a great experience to have in a friendship
It's not that they don't like to compete. It's that over time that the bar gets raised so high that they can't. People get too good while their skills don't increase as much or remain static. Or the effort needed to remain competitive is too much.
Dawn of War hasn't aged very well for me. The camera is super zoomed in and the user interface takes up huge swathes of screen real estate.
There are several mods floating around that improve this.
I recall a LAN party where we used two mods, one for the field of view (2x wider), and increased the unit cap (again, by 2x).
It made for some pretty epic (and laggy) games.
I recall a LAN party where we used two mods, one for the field of view (2x wider), and increased the unit cap (again, by 2x).
It made for some pretty epic (and laggy) games.
> Blizzard had a long distraction with WoW, then they made Starcraft 2 followed by the MOBA Heroes of the Storm. They’re still insanely successful. Now they’re remaking their old games, recently releasing a HD remake of Starcraft 1 and are about to release a remake of Warcraft III.
Blizzard went off the rails by dumbing down WoW steadily over ten years, appealing to the lowest common demoninator. Modern WoW is boring, unchallenging, and appears designed to provoke the least amount of whining by a vocal but dispassionate player base.
If you look at a chart of subscriptions over time, it peaked with an expansion ten years ago, and has declined steadily since. This coincides with changes to the game that made it require less time, less thinking, and less skill. I imagine they felt they were broadening the appeal, but they turned off the players who made the game a blockbuster. If you removed people who still pay for it but don't play, or people clinging to nostalgia, the numbers would tank even more.
I was surprised when they re-released the original game as "Classic WoW". While I don't know what the subscriber numbers look like, the servers are overflowing, and the player base is even more passionate than when it was released 15 years ago.
I think the same thing happened with other recent Blizzard games. They went for mass appeal in a way that turned off the players who helped build their empire. Chasing the MOBA fad didn't work out for them. I'm glad they're going back to their roots.
Maybe I'm just a crusty old gamer nostalgic for the past, but there are a lot of us out there.
Blizzard went off the rails by dumbing down WoW steadily over ten years, appealing to the lowest common demoninator. Modern WoW is boring, unchallenging, and appears designed to provoke the least amount of whining by a vocal but dispassionate player base.
If you look at a chart of subscriptions over time, it peaked with an expansion ten years ago, and has declined steadily since. This coincides with changes to the game that made it require less time, less thinking, and less skill. I imagine they felt they were broadening the appeal, but they turned off the players who made the game a blockbuster. If you removed people who still pay for it but don't play, or people clinging to nostalgia, the numbers would tank even more.
I was surprised when they re-released the original game as "Classic WoW". While I don't know what the subscriber numbers look like, the servers are overflowing, and the player base is even more passionate than when it was released 15 years ago.
I think the same thing happened with other recent Blizzard games. They went for mass appeal in a way that turned off the players who helped build their empire. Chasing the MOBA fad didn't work out for them. I'm glad they're going back to their roots.
Maybe I'm just a crusty old gamer nostalgic for the past, but there are a lot of us out there.
Blizzard tried very hard to get WoW players to be hardcore. That attempt largely failed. They even admitted it in the New York Times.
So they had a choice: just write off most of that large and lucrative audience, or adjust the game to cater to them. Arguably they didn't go far enough in that.
The argument that the game declined as it was made easier, and therefore making it easier caused the decline, is a great example of confusing cause and effect. The game was made easier, or at least was made to have easier elements, because non-hardcore players were churning out. The alternative scenario, that keeping the game exclusive would have retained players better, is absurd on its face. How does content that a player does not do, and that tells that player they are bad, retain that player? If anything, that content is a net negative for that player.
So they had a choice: just write off most of that large and lucrative audience, or adjust the game to cater to them. Arguably they didn't go far enough in that.
The argument that the game declined as it was made easier, and therefore making it easier caused the decline, is a great example of confusing cause and effect. The game was made easier, or at least was made to have easier elements, because non-hardcore players were churning out. The alternative scenario, that keeping the game exclusive would have retained players better, is absurd on its face. How does content that a player does not do, and that tells that player they are bad, retain that player? If anything, that content is a net negative for that player.
>Blizzard went off the rails by dumbing down WoW [...], appealing to the lowest common demoninator. [...] WoW is boring, unchallenging, and appears designed to provoke the least amount of whining by a vocal but dispassionate player base.
I was around the MMO scene back when Blizzard was developing WoW, and this was the general sentiment around the community even at the time, it was seen as the care-bearest of the all the care-bear MMOs (which is what people at the time called MMOs that weren't hardcore enough for them, particularly in the PvP area). A lot of people that WoW was a step backwards for MMORPGs. At the time MMO developers were doing a lot of interesting things with games like DAoC, Star Wars: Galaxies, Anarchy Online, etc. There was something for all tastes, in particular games like SWG were starting to feature persistent player-build towns, non-combat focused professions that actually made sense to use, interesting skill systems and a more social experience.
At the time WoW felt like a return to the old days of Everquest, only even more simplified and polished (which makes sense since some of the same people were involved). There was even a sort of a competition (more of a shouting match) between Everquest II fans and WoW fans before either game got released as to which would be the future of MMO games. We all know how that fight went.
What I and many MMO fans at the time failed to understand is that WoW wasn't for us. It was for people who had never player a MMO game before. It wasn't an attempt to get MMO fans invested in Warcraft, it was a brilliant move to introduce all the Warcraft fans to MMOs (and the marketing material at the time was very clear about it). It was all designed from the ground up for people who had never even known that MMOs existed, since the MMO market was pretty small back then, and what little there was was pretty divided.
This is also why many people these days have fondness for "Classic WoW," because it was their first, and you never forget your first. Incidentally my first was a pretty shit game called The 4th Coming and I still remember it fondly, while ignoring most of its faults (what kind of casual needs an interactive map anyway, just look at this still picture that roughly resembles the world and navigate using landmarks, much more immersive that way). This is also the reason why all the WoW clones never caught on. The people making them (or changing their game to be more like WoW, looking at you New Game Experience) failed to realize that most WoW players don't really like MMOs, they like WoW, specifically.
Writing this has made me feel pretty old, but I very clearly remember scoffing at WoW players as casuals and their game as an Everquest clone. Here I was playing much better games like UO and SWG and they didn't even know better. Well, time passed and now I'm the one that didn't know better, but I'm still kinda bitter that the success of WoW massively contributed to the death of the type of MMO I liked, and even if it looks like WoWs influence over the newer MMOs is slowly fading, I don't think I'll ever get to enjoy any new MMO the same way I enjoyed the originals.
I was around the MMO scene back when Blizzard was developing WoW, and this was the general sentiment around the community even at the time, it was seen as the care-bearest of the all the care-bear MMOs (which is what people at the time called MMOs that weren't hardcore enough for them, particularly in the PvP area). A lot of people that WoW was a step backwards for MMORPGs. At the time MMO developers were doing a lot of interesting things with games like DAoC, Star Wars: Galaxies, Anarchy Online, etc. There was something for all tastes, in particular games like SWG were starting to feature persistent player-build towns, non-combat focused professions that actually made sense to use, interesting skill systems and a more social experience.
At the time WoW felt like a return to the old days of Everquest, only even more simplified and polished (which makes sense since some of the same people were involved). There was even a sort of a competition (more of a shouting match) between Everquest II fans and WoW fans before either game got released as to which would be the future of MMO games. We all know how that fight went.
What I and many MMO fans at the time failed to understand is that WoW wasn't for us. It was for people who had never player a MMO game before. It wasn't an attempt to get MMO fans invested in Warcraft, it was a brilliant move to introduce all the Warcraft fans to MMOs (and the marketing material at the time was very clear about it). It was all designed from the ground up for people who had never even known that MMOs existed, since the MMO market was pretty small back then, and what little there was was pretty divided.
This is also why many people these days have fondness for "Classic WoW," because it was their first, and you never forget your first. Incidentally my first was a pretty shit game called The 4th Coming and I still remember it fondly, while ignoring most of its faults (what kind of casual needs an interactive map anyway, just look at this still picture that roughly resembles the world and navigate using landmarks, much more immersive that way). This is also the reason why all the WoW clones never caught on. The people making them (or changing their game to be more like WoW, looking at you New Game Experience) failed to realize that most WoW players don't really like MMOs, they like WoW, specifically.
Writing this has made me feel pretty old, but I very clearly remember scoffing at WoW players as casuals and their game as an Everquest clone. Here I was playing much better games like UO and SWG and they didn't even know better. Well, time passed and now I'm the one that didn't know better, but I'm still kinda bitter that the success of WoW massively contributed to the death of the type of MMO I liked, and even if it looks like WoWs influence over the newer MMOs is slowly fading, I don't think I'll ever get to enjoy any new MMO the same way I enjoyed the originals.
Anarchy Online was one the best games I played. It was so challenging and cryptic , learning all the skills to use parts of the environment (computer literacy to use the 'grid'). Also the concepts and writing was really good. Nanoparticles as magic, CPU slots on your belt to hold 'programs' running on you that give extra stats, Implants as an extra layer of armor
My first MMO was ultima online, followed by Ashrons Call (Darktide), SWG, AO and shadowbane, and I’m enjoying the hell out of classic WoW.
I think the GP is absolutely right, Blizzard went to far with their streamlining, and every other MMO copied them.
For me the key difference between modern and classic wow is the design approach to challenge. In classic you go at things expecting to fail, in modern you go at things expecting to win. The difference this makes is that classic makes you happy while modern makes you sad when your expectations aren’t met.
Part of what makes that possible is the player freedom. You can make different builds, you can approach content differently and you can overcome challenges your own way. It’s like Blizzard, and I think modern game design in general, forgot that being challenged and figuring things out is fun.
I think I may have forgotten too, because I’ve been surprised at how well classic holds up in 2019.
I think the GP is absolutely right, Blizzard went to far with their streamlining, and every other MMO copied them.
For me the key difference between modern and classic wow is the design approach to challenge. In classic you go at things expecting to fail, in modern you go at things expecting to win. The difference this makes is that classic makes you happy while modern makes you sad when your expectations aren’t met.
Part of what makes that possible is the player freedom. You can make different builds, you can approach content differently and you can overcome challenges your own way. It’s like Blizzard, and I think modern game design in general, forgot that being challenged and figuring things out is fun.
I think I may have forgotten too, because I’ve been surprised at how well classic holds up in 2019.
I would agree that Classic is a decent experience compared to modern MMOs, even if it's not the style of MMO I prefer.
That said, I kinda understand how Blizzard got to where it is with modern WoW. Blizzard has always been known for taking existing ideas and streamlining them and polishing them as much as possible. That, and not gameplay innovation, has always been their forte. In a way they're analogous to Apple, they take ideas that have been tried by others and combine them into a single polished experience.
Since polishing and streamlining is what they know best, and since it has always brought them success (even the original WoW was very polished and streamlined, or if put less charitably, dumbed down, when compared to other MMOs of the time), it's understandable that when faced with a declining player base they'd continue doing what they know best. Big corporations like that don't really have a good mechanism for changing course and trying something else, so they keep doubling down on their old ways and hoping it keeps working until a breaking point is reached, and then they do stuff like re-release their old games hoping to cash in on the nostalgia.
That said, I kinda understand how Blizzard got to where it is with modern WoW. Blizzard has always been known for taking existing ideas and streamlining them and polishing them as much as possible. That, and not gameplay innovation, has always been their forte. In a way they're analogous to Apple, they take ideas that have been tried by others and combine them into a single polished experience.
Since polishing and streamlining is what they know best, and since it has always brought them success (even the original WoW was very polished and streamlined, or if put less charitably, dumbed down, when compared to other MMOs of the time), it's understandable that when faced with a declining player base they'd continue doing what they know best. Big corporations like that don't really have a good mechanism for changing course and trying something else, so they keep doubling down on their old ways and hoping it keeps working until a breaking point is reached, and then they do stuff like re-release their old games hoping to cash in on the nostalgia.
I find it interesting that MMORPGs didn't actually develop in the direction that MMORPGs portrayed themselves as. The idea of an MMORPG was to be an entire world and the player would simply be a participant in it. Ultima Online, at first, tried to have some form of an ecological system where carnivores eat herbivores etc. This didn't work out, but you can clearly imagine that the goal was to create a world. However, somewhere between that and modern day MMOs things seem to have changed. The goal doesn't seem to be to create a world, but to simply provide a multiplayer game with a bigger map. It's as though it's meant to be social media with a game attached.
I'm not sure if I worded things correctly, but it just seems to me that MMORPGs aren't trying to build a game world anymore.
I'm not sure if I worded things correctly, but it just seems to me that MMORPGs aren't trying to build a game world anymore.
The only game that successfully did that was eve and I always find it amazing that nobody else tried it.
Oh people tried. It's just that the effort required to develop these kinds of game worlds relative to the amount of fun gained is often very poor. That's not to say it's nonexistant, it's just that its easy to say something like "I want NPCs to go about their lives in the world convincingly and be affected by player actions", but it's quite another thing to program such a system, pay voice actors, hire writers to write thousands of possible permutations of dialog, with high chances of it ending up having little concequence for the players except as an idle curiosity while they wait for something else.
I would call those "scaling issues". Let's see if deep learning advances along the lines of gpt2 can start solving them. I think that we will know the answer in 5 years.
I think that the "just nostalgia for your formative years" argument, being fundamentally ad hominem (doesn't mean it's not relevant though!) is a little flawed against actual criticism. I never really played MMOs apart from some F2P titles back in middle school, but I believe that "dumbing down" games is a real thing and detrimental to people playing. When I emerge from a longer playing session of some challenging game where I'm really on my own when it comes to controlling it and winning (I'm thinking Nethack, a game way older than me), I feel... not productive, but intellectually capable. No regrets. Whereas after a session of something where 1) the devs really want me to win and God forbid not feel lost or overwhelmed by anything! 2) there's a clear intention to continually suck time and preferably money, I feel dumber myself, my time wasted and sadder about doing anything else. And of course they make it at least somewhat addictive to make it harder to stop.
What I'm saying is games are a significant part of daily life experience for many people, and it's fair to judge how it shapes them. I'm not saying all games should be hard, just that they should provide honest rather than fake challenge on the appropriate level.
What I'm saying is games are a significant part of daily life experience for many people, and it's fair to judge how it shapes them. I'm not saying all games should be hard, just that they should provide honest rather than fake challenge on the appropriate level.
> I was around the MMO scene back when Blizzard was developing WoW, and this was the general sentiment around the community even at the time, it was seen as the care-bearest of the all the care-bear MMOs (which is what people at the time called MMOs that weren't hardcore enough for them, particularly in the PvP area). A lot of people that WoW was a step backwards for MMORPGs.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who remembers this. I find it extremely humorous all the people saying WoW is too spoon fed and they want Classic for a "real challenge".
I remember many friends not wanting to touch WoW because of how themepark it was when it came out. They wanted something _more_ challenging that what they had experienced, not less.
I remember MMOs where you printed out a generic map and had to navigate the world like you would in person (well... a person without a gps these days lol)
I'm glad I'm not the only one who remembers this. I find it extremely humorous all the people saying WoW is too spoon fed and they want Classic for a "real challenge".
I remember many friends not wanting to touch WoW because of how themepark it was when it came out. They wanted something _more_ challenging that what they had experienced, not less.
I remember MMOs where you printed out a generic map and had to navigate the world like you would in person (well... a person without a gps these days lol)
I am not sure I buy into this narrative so much anymore. The game is old and the original userbase has moved on. I am not convinced that WoW could ever have kept catching new players and retaining the old ones however they chose to proceed. The burst of excitement for Classic will last a while and then fade too. I think, at least.
I think Classic will fade, because it's hyped up to be more than it really is. Old WoW was difficult, but part of that difficulty was that people just weren't as good at the game back then (or games in general?). Many people were already doing Molten Core just a few days after release of Classic.
I do not know. Those are hardcore players so that was expected.
A lot of people are looking for the community feeling and a slower playing pace which does not focus on min-maxing. Classic can definitely give you that.
I cannot help but feel community cannot exist if you don't have single shard worlds with no cross server play at all
"Modern WoW is [...] unchallenging"
Well this is just false.
I would say the mythic raids are the hardest theyve ever been.
Mythic+ offers its own scaling difficulty from easy to hard to impossible.
PvP is as engaging and tough as ever.
Id argue these are all fun too. Maybe you've just moved on. The game has to change overtime.
Well this is just false.
I would say the mythic raids are the hardest theyve ever been.
Mythic+ offers its own scaling difficulty from easy to hard to impossible.
PvP is as engaging and tough as ever.
Id argue these are all fun too. Maybe you've just moved on. The game has to change overtime.
Yeah but Mythic+ is not the mainstream content most of the players experience in the game.
And the anti-social behaviour and elitism surrounding those groups who do M+ has even become a meme.
The mainstream wow content is ridiculously unchallenging. You are grinding dailys you can join up queues to do your daily/weekly run of the instances and repeat next Wednesday. This is what most of the people playing retail see and do. The most challenging thing about it is not stopping out of boredom.
And the anti-social behaviour and elitism surrounding those groups who do M+ has even become a meme.
The mainstream wow content is ridiculously unchallenging. You are grinding dailys you can join up queues to do your daily/weekly run of the instances and repeat next Wednesday. This is what most of the people playing retail see and do. The most challenging thing about it is not stopping out of boredom.
> Yeah but Mythic+ is not the mainstream content most of the players experience in the game.
So, your objection seems to be that players who don't want challenging content are catered to much at all. You don't want those players, who comprise most of the player population, to have "mainstream content".
Viewed in that light, I don't see how your criticism can be viewed as legitimate.
So, your objection seems to be that players who don't want challenging content are catered to much at all. You don't want those players, who comprise most of the player population, to have "mainstream content".
Viewed in that light, I don't see how your criticism can be viewed as legitimate.
> So, your objection seems to be that players who don't want challenging content are catered to much at all.
No it's not.
In fact it's the opposite. Many people want to do Mythics. In fact it's required for some professions to make sense. The problem is that if you don't have a raiding guild at hand or have participated in the M+ (or normal mythic) content from day 1 the elite won't take you along. Sometimes you even have to pay to be taken along.
Also: all this relates to the M+ content which is a fraction of the whole game which is unchallenging.
To wrap this up: a fraction of the game is challenging but remains almost unreachable for the general public due to the player base.
No it's not.
In fact it's the opposite. Many people want to do Mythics. In fact it's required for some professions to make sense. The problem is that if you don't have a raiding guild at hand or have participated in the M+ (or normal mythic) content from day 1 the elite won't take you along. Sometimes you even have to pay to be taken along.
Also: all this relates to the M+ content which is a fraction of the whole game which is unchallenging.
To wrap this up: a fraction of the game is challenging but remains almost unreachable for the general public due to the player base.
So..... the game is both difficult and unchallenging?
No. This is not what I wrote there. I try again:
Most of the game content and mechanics is unchallenging.
A group of people "guarding" the tiny difficult part are difficult.
Most of the game content and mechanics is unchallenging.
A group of people "guarding" the tiny difficult part are difficult.
I'll disagree so, so very much with this and I am certain this comes from someone who hasn't played the game for a while or played very casually. Yes, doing quests and just roaming around has became way easier than before, however the game has tons of room for anyone who actually wants a challenge. I don't want to go super deep, but high end raiding is still alive and finally started getting monetized/sponsored plus you can always push mythic+ dungeons. It has to be noted, that all of this is group content and what WoW lacks right now is difficult solo content and I'd give you that.
Basicly right now the retail WoW can be played as time-intensively and on whatever difficulty you want. There is always something to do, however you hit diminishing returns quite soon. There is tons of hard, engaging content to be done with friends.
I think Classic is kinda fad, something a lot of people think they wanted, but after some time they will realize they did not. Of course, I might be wrong in which case I am happy they got a completely new game to play and hope they enjoy it as much as I enjoyed the two years of WoW Legion(had to stop, because I did not have time to play at the level I wanted).
On the other hand, I can't wait for Warcraft 3 Remastered, that will work by default with most of old custom maps. I am taking a week off for that. :)
Basicly right now the retail WoW can be played as time-intensively and on whatever difficulty you want. There is always something to do, however you hit diminishing returns quite soon. There is tons of hard, engaging content to be done with friends.
I think Classic is kinda fad, something a lot of people think they wanted, but after some time they will realize they did not. Of course, I might be wrong in which case I am happy they got a completely new game to play and hope they enjoy it as much as I enjoyed the two years of WoW Legion(had to stop, because I did not have time to play at the level I wanted).
On the other hand, I can't wait for Warcraft 3 Remastered, that will work by default with most of old custom maps. I am taking a week off for that. :)
> what WoW lacks right now is difficult solo content
This is what burned me out on it to begin with, and I'm still kinda there. Instead of providing interesting and difficult challenges, they introduced vast amounts of repetitive tediousness.
I seek out well-crafted tension and release in my entertainment, but I don't have a lot of free time. On a regular basis, I want to struggle somewhat and maybe need a few attempts to defeat a challenging scenario, then occasionally receive a nontrivial reward for it. It's not a complex formula, just one WoW doesn't provide. If they did, I would be more likely to consider a subscription.
Another aspect which could give the 'more challenging yet not too time intensive single player campaign' a better chance in the market is making minor tweaks to such campaigns so they're also playable by a couple. There are tons of couples who have played this game together over the years (probably most of whom have limited interest in coordinating lengthy raids with strangers in their limited free time). It seems to me like a win-win to provide them and solo players something interesting to do that doesn't require too much grinding.
This is what burned me out on it to begin with, and I'm still kinda there. Instead of providing interesting and difficult challenges, they introduced vast amounts of repetitive tediousness.
I seek out well-crafted tension and release in my entertainment, but I don't have a lot of free time. On a regular basis, I want to struggle somewhat and maybe need a few attempts to defeat a challenging scenario, then occasionally receive a nontrivial reward for it. It's not a complex formula, just one WoW doesn't provide. If they did, I would be more likely to consider a subscription.
Another aspect which could give the 'more challenging yet not too time intensive single player campaign' a better chance in the market is making minor tweaks to such campaigns so they're also playable by a couple. There are tons of couples who have played this game together over the years (probably most of whom have limited interest in coordinating lengthy raids with strangers in their limited free time). It seems to me like a win-win to provide them and solo players something interesting to do that doesn't require too much grinding.
The thing Vanilla had was you were locked in a realm, faction, class, and spec. That was you. People learn to know you. You become friends. You build up a name. You know a mage who can come? Sure let me ask my friend, slfnflctd.
And you know what? I didn't even play Vanilla. But I have played a plethora of games where community was important, including SWTOR.
I had a similar feeling in Legion (the cross-realm pulp is terrible but PvP was decent). I was attached to one character, and no more split farm. However the RNG fest of legendaries and the mega grind of AP were not my cup of tea. I kinda liked the relic system and the augmentation aspect of the legendaries.
(I quit hardcore raiding end of WoD.)
And you know what? I didn't even play Vanilla. But I have played a plethora of games where community was important, including SWTOR.
I had a similar feeling in Legion (the cross-realm pulp is terrible but PvP was decent). I was attached to one character, and no more split farm. However the RNG fest of legendaries and the mega grind of AP were not my cup of tea. I kinda liked the relic system and the augmentation aspect of the legendaries.
(I quit hardcore raiding end of WoD.)
Man, you hit the nail on the head with this. I agree with everything you said. I wish WoW had some solo content for me as I can't always be available to raid anymore. Plenty of my friends have been playing classic recently and have been just complaining the entire time. They all use to play, so I think the fad pulled them in before they could realize why Blizzard fixed the things they did.
Also, WC3 custom games will be my time sink for a LONG time again. I loved them so much growing up.
Also, WC3 custom games will be my time sink for a LONG time again. I loved them so much growing up.
Starcraft 1 and Starcraft 2, neither are dumbed down, the pace of new features is just very very very slow, esp fof SCRM aka broodwar.
Total Annihilation holds a big part in my history. It was a great game for one thing, but annihilated.com inspired me to get into running a website.
Thanks to TA and annihilated, I ran my own website based on a game (a Star Trek one), which at peak in 1999 was getting 2000 uniques a day. Taking USD cheques (like $40) from doubleclick into my UK bank in my school uniform in 1998ish was a unique experience.
Thanks to that experience it drove me to where I am today.
As far as actual RTS game play, Red Alert was best in my view. One disc for soviet, one for allied. Tanya, Dogs, and Tesla Coils. So many hours, so little to show for it.
Thanks to TA and annihilated, I ran my own website based on a game (a Star Trek one), which at peak in 1999 was getting 2000 uniques a day. Taking USD cheques (like $40) from doubleclick into my UK bank in my school uniform in 1998ish was a unique experience.
Thanks to that experience it drove me to where I am today.
As far as actual RTS game play, Red Alert was best in my view. One disc for soviet, one for allied. Tanya, Dogs, and Tesla Coils. So many hours, so little to show for it.
Not sure if you are aware of the community that keeps Supreme Commander Forged Alliances - but this goes on sale for a couple bucks every big steam sale. If you have any version of the game on CD, steam will convert your CD keys into the gold version (both vanilla and SupCom:FA). https://www.faforever.com is an updated set of rules, graphics, patches, multiplayer, etc that totally updates the game to a very playable experience. Even the original single player missions were updated to co-op.
I liked TA much more than RA. The strategy felt deeper, plus I liked the idea of the Commander unit representing you on the battle field. Sending him into battle was a risky move. The D-Gun made him extremely powerful, but if he died, you lose.
The nukes in RA were also just plain pitiful and not really worth the time to build.
The nukes in RA were also just plain pitiful and not really worth the time to build.
we used to play TA at lunch...but cut it off abruptly after an hour.. . so we'd spend 55 minutes building up epic armies then send them to apocalypse for the last 5 minutes :)
I tried to fire up my TA disk in a Win7 machine a few years ago, but the graphics came out all wrong :( any suggestions for reviving it?
I tried to fire up my TA disk in a Win7 machine a few years ago, but the graphics came out all wrong :( any suggestions for reviving it?
I play it via WINE on Linux, works well.
Try this patch: https://www.tauniverse.com/forum/showthread.php?t=43735
There is also the spring project. http://www.springrts.com/
It's too hard for most players. Dota and LoL have similarity in being real time, but you get the comfort to blame teammates for your loss and it's much slower paced. In starcraft, you are literally playing by yourself as fast as possible for the entire match, win or lose, no breaks for respawns or waiting, and you can lose in some spectacularly frustrating ways. Ever move command your army into theirs and lose it all? Ever hit yourself with a spell? Find their hidden tech or hidden base way too late? I love it but it's seriously a masochistic genre of gaming.
The 'combined arms' approach where your 'macro' is turn-based and your 'micro' is real-time is doing very well in Total War franchise (briefly mentioned in the article).
Turn-based aspect of settlement/empire management flows much better than real-time base-building aspect of the classic RTSes. Battles being fought in a separate real-time ux means that you can field thousands of troop models while micro-managing tens of 'squads' -- and you don't have to worry about strategic side in the middle of the battle.
Both aspects are richer as a result of separation.
Turn-based aspect of settlement/empire management flows much better than real-time base-building aspect of the classic RTSes. Battles being fought in a separate real-time ux means that you can field thousands of troop models while micro-managing tens of 'squads' -- and you don't have to worry about strategic side in the middle of the battle.
Both aspects are richer as a result of separation.
You say "richer", I say "removes important difficulty". Part of what makes the genre interesting is balancing your attention between these different aspects.
But more importantly, it's critical to an RTS that you can use micro to disrupt enemy resource gathering. If all unit movement is decided on a turn-based world map, you can't sneak around a distracted army to take out a strategic point. Micro still influences who wins a battle, but you have to have a head-on fight. A combat is stuck in one grid cell instead of having access to the entire world.
(The hybrid design can make the macro richer. But troop movement and micro suffer a lot. It's not win/win.)
But more importantly, it's critical to an RTS that you can use micro to disrupt enemy resource gathering. If all unit movement is decided on a turn-based world map, you can't sneak around a distracted army to take out a strategic point. Micro still influences who wins a battle, but you have to have a head-on fight. A combat is stuck in one grid cell instead of having access to the entire world.
(The hybrid design can make the macro richer. But troop movement and micro suffer a lot. It's not win/win.)
> you can't sneak around a distracted army to take out a strategic point
Sure you can. In civ for example, sail your fleet one way under fog of war, move your army another to suck in units.
I would argue that sneaking based on "the human playing the video game was focused on something else" is a less compelling dynamic than sneaking based on "real" dynamics.
Sure you can. In civ for example, sail your fleet one way under fog of war, move your army another to suck in units.
I would argue that sneaking based on "the human playing the video game was focused on something else" is a less compelling dynamic than sneaking based on "real" dynamics.
> Sure you can. In civ for example, sail your fleet one way under fog of war, move your army another to suck in units.
That's not getting around a distracted army.
Even if we ignore player focus, and pretend everyone can multitask perfectly, you're still losing options. You can't engage in a big fight on one side of a map just long enough for a flanking force to hit a critical target, then immediately retreat out of the main fight to avoid losses. With turn-based movement, that big fight is either unnecessary or it's likely to get your army crushed by the non-split-up force from lack of retreat options.
And you can't dodge an intercepting force with most forms of turn-based movement.
That's not getting around a distracted army.
Even if we ignore player focus, and pretend everyone can multitask perfectly, you're still losing options. You can't engage in a big fight on one side of a map just long enough for a flanking force to hit a critical target, then immediately retreat out of the main fight to avoid losses. With turn-based movement, that big fight is either unnecessary or it's likely to get your army crushed by the non-split-up force from lack of retreat options.
And you can't dodge an intercepting force with most forms of turn-based movement.
You can indeed do what you describe. It is a sometime useful tactic in e.g. quest battles where you can kill a target then withdraw. An uncommon thing to do but generally possible.
But what you seem to describe are tactical operations, so they are happening on a tactical map. Sneaking up a group of units with stalk/forward deployment behind enemy lines then hitting the backline with it in an opportune moment when the main lines are engaging is a staple in a tactical engagement. As are the flanking maneuvers. You might not be hitting the workers or the production buildings but taking out an artillery piece is just as important and satisfying. Cavalry play has alot of the 'dodge the intercepting force' moments, etc.
The high-end TW multiplayer play is not the same and it might not be as difficult as high-end Starcraft play but I have never found the apm requirements and the need to control both macro and micro at the same time an appealing challenge. And the single player campaign is just straight up better because of a sheer variety of what you are doing.
But what you seem to describe are tactical operations, so they are happening on a tactical map. Sneaking up a group of units with stalk/forward deployment behind enemy lines then hitting the backline with it in an opportune moment when the main lines are engaging is a staple in a tactical engagement. As are the flanking maneuvers. You might not be hitting the workers or the production buildings but taking out an artillery piece is just as important and satisfying. Cavalry play has alot of the 'dodge the intercepting force' moments, etc.
The high-end TW multiplayer play is not the same and it might not be as difficult as high-end Starcraft play but I have never found the apm requirements and the need to control both macro and micro at the same time an appealing challenge. And the single player campaign is just straight up better because of a sheer variety of what you are doing.
There are indeed retreat options in Total War.
Can you retreat fast enough to avoid the entire fight? If so that falls under "the big fight is unnecessary"
If there's a time limit before you can retreat, it all seems rather... artificial, compared to having full control on a single map.
If there's a time limit before you can retreat, it all seems rather... artificial, compared to having full control on a single map.
I’d also point out that you can adjust the “speed” of army movement — at least in TW: Warhammer — so that if they’re moving more quickly, like a forced march, they are less likely to spot hidden or sneaking armies. This does leave the mechanic depending on user choice of where to focus, not just ambient fog of war. It at least gives a similar state of mind as in SC where the player says to himself “do I go in with blinders on or do I proceed with more attention to surroundings” with real pros/cons for each.
I played StarCraft 2 for nearly a decade after it came out. It was always a solid experience. It is surprising that in all that time, there hasn't been a serious competitor to SC2 in the traditional RTS format. This article does a great job of breaking down why that might be. I mean, the mobile revolution did take some steam and excitement out of PC gaming for a while there. As the author points out, game devs tend to chase the trends and in some cases, they have to. I agree with the author's conclusion that the industry is missing out on a big opportunity. They remain to this day my most satisfying gaming experiences. And if they're done right and well balanced, people will play the same RTS for decades, so they have a lot of staying power.
I remember when the iPad came out I was incredibly excited. This was surely perfect for RTS games!
There was Command & Conquer: Red Alert Mobile, then....
The only other one I remember was an actually really good StarCraft clone by Gameloft (I forget the name).
I always thought mobile would be great for RTS and then it just wasn't. Though when I think about it, the keyboard is pretty important and that kind of fast control is really difficult on a touchscreen, so maybe that explains the lack of 'classic' RTS games on touch devices.
There was Command & Conquer: Red Alert Mobile, then....
The only other one I remember was an actually really good StarCraft clone by Gameloft (I forget the name).
I always thought mobile would be great for RTS and then it just wasn't. Though when I think about it, the keyboard is pretty important and that kind of fast control is really difficult on a touchscreen, so maybe that explains the lack of 'classic' RTS games on touch devices.
You wrote exactly my thoughts! I was so excited for a new generation of touch-optimized RTS games when the iPad was released and I’ve been disappointed with the options.
Do you (or anyone) know of any iPad games that fit the bill these days? I played Vainglory for a while but that’s not a RTS - it’s a MOBA (and was fun and worked super well on touch).
Do you (or anyone) know of any iPad games that fit the bill these days? I played Vainglory for a while but that’s not a RTS - it’s a MOBA (and was fun and worked super well on touch).
Someone else mentioned Rusted Warfare.
Small shoutout for 0AD which is a fully open source RTS in the style of age of empire and now very polished (my little brother, who was used to starcraft, is now playing it happily) : https://play0ad.com
I think it boils down to four things:
- RTS games, since the first C&C, used an interface for selecting rectangles and pointing them at a single target. It scales extremely poorly. Innovations in this area have failed to catch on. Keyboard used for shortcuts only. Come on, we can do better than that. We have Vim. Action, range(movement key). Alternatively, the Kakoune way: selection first, action second. Either way games lack a fast way to select only certain types of units, and especially - to point them at targets of certain types. Harvest: Massive Encounter is a low budget tower defense games which allows you to set targetting priorities for each type of your tower, but RTS games need much, much more systems like that.
Meanwhile Starcraft has been busy embracing and glorifying primitive user interfaces. It has its caveman charm, but - by design - it scales only by clicking faster.
- RTS games were popular at a time when computers were predominantly used by nerds. RTS games appeal mostly to people willing to get better at a game. Publishers discovered less demanding games sell better.
- RTS games are highly demanding to make from technical point of view. You get all the joys of pathfinding at large scale. Optimizations are very important.
- RTS games are not that immersive. This is true for all "topdown" perspective games.
- RTS games, since the first C&C, used an interface for selecting rectangles and pointing them at a single target. It scales extremely poorly. Innovations in this area have failed to catch on. Keyboard used for shortcuts only. Come on, we can do better than that. We have Vim. Action, range(movement key). Alternatively, the Kakoune way: selection first, action second. Either way games lack a fast way to select only certain types of units, and especially - to point them at targets of certain types. Harvest: Massive Encounter is a low budget tower defense games which allows you to set targetting priorities for each type of your tower, but RTS games need much, much more systems like that.
Meanwhile Starcraft has been busy embracing and glorifying primitive user interfaces. It has its caveman charm, but - by design - it scales only by clicking faster.
- RTS games were popular at a time when computers were predominantly used by nerds. RTS games appeal mostly to people willing to get better at a game. Publishers discovered less demanding games sell better.
- RTS games are highly demanding to make from technical point of view. You get all the joys of pathfinding at large scale. Optimizations are very important.
- RTS games are not that immersive. This is true for all "topdown" perspective games.
I just came up with a 5th:
- RTS games work poorly on consoles. They need a precise input device.
I think this is the big one. Consoles and CoD dominated the market for a long time. Has the pendulum swung back towards PC games? I have to confess, it's been a long time since I played anything. Games dev companies just stopped making games for people like me.
That is only true if Starcraft style RTS games.
As opposed to which other style/styles?
Arcade. As the godfather of all RTS, Herzog Zwei, used.
Gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYfYrhT82RM
Gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYfYrhT82RM
Tooth and Tail was pretty good, and it's only playable with a controller. I also played the hell out of Battlezone 64 back in the day, which is a FPS/strategy game.
It's a doable thing, people just haven't tried (aside from the above) very hard.
It's a doable thing, people just haven't tried (aside from the above) very hard.
You should look at the later TA style games then. Supreme Commander and SpringRTS (open source!) based games have many innovations when it comes to managing your units. Check out Zero-K for a game that is I think one of the most advanced RTSes in terms of gameplay and controls. It's not looking too pretty by today's standards, but the inner values make up for it if you are willing to invest some time to learn.
'Either way games lack a fast way to select only certain types of units'
- I remember this being a key to why I loved 'Empire Earth 2' so much. Selecting all of type X in view, or worldwide and such I think was a thing.
I'd love to have a remake of the Empire Earth (1 and 2) - and to have a mashup with some of the things from Populace on the Amiga would actually be very cool.
- I remember this being a key to why I loved 'Empire Earth 2' so much. Selecting all of type X in view, or worldwide and such I think was a thing.
I'd love to have a remake of the Empire Earth (1 and 2) - and to have a mashup with some of the things from Populace on the Amiga would actually be very cool.
Let's make a RTS with Vim shortcuts/commands!
I actually don't mean this as a joke. This would increase the initial learning curve a bit, but then you would be able to press 3 keys to:
[P]lanes [A]ttack [T]anks
[T]anks [C]rush [I]nfantry
[I]nfantry [M]ove Co[v]er
A[r]tillery [A]ttack [B]ack
A[r]tillery [A]ttack [D]amaged
A[r]tillery [A]ttack B[u]ildings
A[r]tillery [A]ttack [S]pread
[D]amaged [M]ove [R]epair
Basically there is a ton of potentially useful commands that can be issued with words (keyboard) and don't need the precision of mouse, especially when you target or select multiple units. There can be commands which target or select not based on unit type, but on role (attack anti-aircraft units), state (damaged, fortified, carried, loaded), position (flank, rear, front, high ground, low ground).
[P]lanes [A]ttack [T]anks
[T]anks [C]rush [I]nfantry
[I]nfantry [M]ove Co[v]er
A[r]tillery [A]ttack [B]ack
A[r]tillery [A]ttack [D]amaged
A[r]tillery [A]ttack B[u]ildings
A[r]tillery [A]ttack [S]pread
[D]amaged [M]ove [R]epair
Basically there is a ton of potentially useful commands that can be issued with words (keyboard) and don't need the precision of mouse, especially when you target or select multiple units. There can be commands which target or select not based on unit type, but on role (attack anti-aircraft units), state (damaged, fortified, carried, loaded), position (flank, rear, front, high ground, low ground).
Allow the user to choose between vim and emacs key bindings. Their choice determines the appearance of their units and buildings.
The fact that Homeworld wasn't mentioned until the last paragraph was a major case of "they had us in the first half not gonna lie" for me.
Cannot wait for the sequel. I spent so many hours playing HW1. Great balance of macro and micro strategy.
Cannot wait for the sequel. I spent so many hours playing HW1. Great balance of macro and micro strategy.
It makes me sad to see no mention of Total Annihilation or Supreme Commander anywhere :(
IMO both are far superior to Starcraft or even AOE
IMO both are far superior to Starcraft or even AOE
Supreme commander was the first RTS I really sunk my teeth into. Planetary Annihilation is an excellent spiritual successor and still gets updates.
I've heard the RTS genre described as three sliders.
1. Amount of control over units
2. Amount of control over a hero
3. Amount of control over building infrastructure
By that definition, RTS is still alive and well. It's just that the particular position of those sliders has changed over time. We have MOBAs which set all the sliders to zero except the hero one. Mobile games like Clash of Clans and Clash Royale provide two more popular configurations.
As for what happened to the classic RTS config many grew up with in the 90s and oughties? My best guess is snuffed out by shifts in game dev economics. AAA single player games only work on consoles (where the controller never played well with RTS) and the near-requirement for every PC multiplayer game to present as an esport raises the buy-in too high
1. Amount of control over units
2. Amount of control over a hero
3. Amount of control over building infrastructure
By that definition, RTS is still alive and well. It's just that the particular position of those sliders has changed over time. We have MOBAs which set all the sliders to zero except the hero one. Mobile games like Clash of Clans and Clash Royale provide two more popular configurations.
As for what happened to the classic RTS config many grew up with in the 90s and oughties? My best guess is snuffed out by shifts in game dev economics. AAA single player games only work on consoles (where the controller never played well with RTS) and the near-requirement for every PC multiplayer game to present as an esport raises the buy-in too high
I've been waiting for Warcraft 4 for 15 years now (can't believe it's been that long!).
Warcraft III/Frozen throne are quite simply the best games that I've ever played, none have ever come close. I'd give honourable mention to Age of Empires/Rise of Nations.
I think it was killed due to the success of World of Warcraft.
Warcraft III/Frozen throne are quite simply the best games that I've ever played, none have ever come close. I'd give honourable mention to Age of Empires/Rise of Nations.
I think it was killed due to the success of World of Warcraft.
My first RTS was the first RTS, Dune. Warcraft 3 is very late stage in the genre and I preferred Warcraft 2 far more. WC3 was a disappointment for me. The genre was mostly exhausted by that time. Today it's all about SC2 for a traditional experience but most people I know are playing League of Legends.
Warcraft III was the start of RTS genre downhill, all that micromanagement of heroes made it pseudo-rts, it was probably where Blizzard got it's WoW idea.
They are releasing a remaster of Warcraft 3, no?
I remember having fun with WC3 so I'll probably give it a try.
I remember having fun with WC3 so I'll probably give it a try.
You're probably correct.
Given the amount of mental energy you need to dump into a game to win against your opponent is high, albeit short lived. These bursts of cerebral fortitude can be exhausting and annoying if you are the loser (which there always will be one of).
Given that risk to reward I can totally see why more gentile games like MMOs, Minecraft, hell even MOBAs have taken over. They are a lot easier to slide into (and out) at every skill level, which also equates to more money to the developers due to a lowering of the bar.
Given that risk to reward I can totally see why more gentile games like MMOs, Minecraft, hell even MOBAs have taken over. They are a lot easier to slide into (and out) at every skill level, which also equates to more money to the developers due to a lowering of the bar.
Same here. It has everything and more character than any other RTS ever made. The damn menu music puts me into Warcraft Meditation Mode. When playing on a CRT monitor the particle effect are "lickable". Major sense of accomplishment playing hard in single player too.
The domination of StarCraft has always bewildered me. I really loved the Battle for Middle Earth games back in the day as they were much more slow paced than SC. I absolutely loved spending an hour in total silence frantically constructing a base or two with massive armies before sending them off en masse against my opponent(s) - usually a friend or two connected via a LAN so you could hear their occasional grunts and chuckles, before cries of dismay or triumph. So fun!
Actually, when my son was little 10 years ago, we used to play Lego Battles on the Nintendo DS, which was a mini RTS and that was surprisingly fun as well! Definitely sad the genre disappeared.
Actually, when my son was little 10 years ago, we used to play Lego Battles on the Nintendo DS, which was a mini RTS and that was surprisingly fun as well! Definitely sad the genre disappeared.
Battle for Middle Earth 1 is definitely one of my favorite RTS, I love how the constraints on buildings played into the mecanics of the game (not a fan of the second one which was more classic).
By the way, if someone is still playing out there, the dwarf hold mod was a great extension to the base game : https://www.moddb.com/mods/the-dwarf-holds
By the way, if someone is still playing out there, the dwarf hold mod was a great extension to the base game : https://www.moddb.com/mods/the-dwarf-holds
I'd count Paradox's games (Hearts of Iron, Europa Universalis, Stellaris, etc.) as "real time" strategy; they're certainly not turn-based. And as far as strategy games go, they're nowadays the gold standard, IMO.
Looking forward to Homeworld 3. Fingers crossed for a Linux-native version, but if not, then hopefully it's as Wine/Proton-friendly as Homeworld: Remastered (and more so than Deserts of Kharak).
Looking forward to Homeworld 3. Fingers crossed for a Linux-native version, but if not, then hopefully it's as Wine/Proton-friendly as Homeworld: Remastered (and more so than Deserts of Kharak).
2004, 2006, and 2007 for Dawn of War, CoH, and SC respectively. More well known titles like Red Alert 2, Command and Conquer Generals, and Warcraft 3 were even earlier than that. Starcraft 2 was the last "AAA" RTS game that I can think of. Deserts of Kharak is probably the only RTS game I've played in the last 8 years that I really enjoyed. I tried CoH 2, but the micro transactions put me off. Eugen's Wargame series and Steel Divison had interesting and deep nuanced mechanics, but single player was very rough and the multiplayer player base wasn't big enough to sustain a good matchmaking experience.
Personally, I think the main culprit is that MOBAs like DotA 2 and League of Legends are too similar in genre and won over much of the RTS player base. Anecdotally, most of the people I knew that were into SC 2 started playing League or Dota 2.
Edit: I totally blanked out on the Total War franchise. That's definitely a staple of mine, and still playing Rome 1 and Medieval 2 mods to this day.
Personally, I think the main culprit is that MOBAs like DotA 2 and League of Legends are too similar in genre and won over much of the RTS player base. Anecdotally, most of the people I knew that were into SC 2 started playing League or Dota 2.
Edit: I totally blanked out on the Total War franchise. That's definitely a staple of mine, and still playing Rome 1 and Medieval 2 mods to this day.
The most popular, recently released RTS I can think of is Factorio. It seems like RTS game elements have been splitting into their constituent parts and forming a game around those.(e.g. production to Factorio, or combat to DOTA) It may be that way there’s a greater ROI on smaller/simpler games than building out all the components involved in an RTS game.
Today gamers don't like to multi-task and Starcraft(and its clones) is a multi-tasking monster(scouting,economy, building, combat), so similar RTS which force multiple issues at same time are outfoxed by simpler game mechanic games where attention is more deeply focused and players can gain skills easier.
Another factor is RTS are anti-casual, they don't forgive mistakes and only a tiny % of gamers can handle the stress of constant losing/failing, in context of highly demanding, multitasking heavy game. The genre doesn't accept game style variations either - a single cookie-cutter build order is the best one, the rest is suboptimal and loses you either time or money.
I never liked the move to really fast-paced, micro-intensive play. Real Time doesn't have to mean such a flurry of movement and clicking. From Starcraft on it seems like the genre has pushed more and more towards the micromanagement game. Heroes exemplified that in WC3.
A battle with more, slower moving units and simplified commands makes for a more tactical match-up that's less about hotkeys and razor-sharp reaction time and more about the art of war.
Does anyone know if there's a franchise out there moving in that direction?
A battle with more, slower moving units and simplified commands makes for a more tactical match-up that's less about hotkeys and razor-sharp reaction time and more about the art of war.
Does anyone know if there's a franchise out there moving in that direction?
The total war series is pretty close to what you're talking about. The problem with your opinion is someone who _does_ do those things will always have an advantage over someone playing more passively.
Oh of course, but that added advantage can be minimized as the lag increases between the time you issue commands and the time you see results. You wouldn't want to eliminate that advantage though--all things being equal, you want the person who is more actively engaged to have a small edge. You just want the impact to be largely outweighed by broader tactical decisions.
I blame the rise of more effective DRM and the removal/demoting of lan play in favor of hosted servers. All of my favorite RTS games were discovered while at a friends house. We’d do a quick copy and have an epic game session, creating a legend game that I’ve bought multiple times since.
Studios should allow copying of games for some purposes like local multiplayer, but protect single player and internet content with IAP, so that the game spreads virally, creating a large market and a strong brand.
This was exactly how many of the classics got started, but back then it was in spite of the studios intentions. I think a good rts could still spread that way but now players would welcome the IAP, as long as core mechanics are available and it’s not pay-to-level-up.
This was exactly how many of the classics got started, but back then it was in spite of the studios intentions. I think a good rts could still spread that way but now players would welcome the IAP, as long as core mechanics are available and it’s not pay-to-level-up.
> Some people from Relic split off to found Blackbird Interactive. They made a prequel to Homeworld which is apparently really good. They’re now also working on Homeworld 3.
Said prequel is Deserts of Kharak, and is indeed quite good. Am replaying it right now, and despite being land-based and 2D rather than space-based and 3D, it still feels like the original Homeworld in terms of pacing and strategy.
Said prequel is Deserts of Kharak, and is indeed quite good. Am replaying it right now, and despite being land-based and 2D rather than space-based and 3D, it still feels like the original Homeworld in terms of pacing and strategy.
Yes, they manged to carry over essential design elements into their land based setting: there are no stationary bases. You have a huge, unique carrier vehicle instead of a mothership. The harvesting mechanics are almost identical. The biggest difference really is the terrain. The game has an easier time shaping the challenges by making use of terrain. In space, breaking the uniformity of the map was more challenging and the original Homeworld series didn't do too well in that regard. Finding in-universe reasons to make space non-uniform is apparently hard. There are resource spots and regions which affected ship systems, but that's it.
>Said prequel is Deserts of Kharak, and is indeed quite good.
I thought the missions were quite tedious tbh. I gave up after the 3rd case of "where is the last enemy unit on map" hunt
I thought the missions were quite tedious tbh. I gave up after the 3rd case of "where is the last enemy unit on map" hunt
Can't believe no one has mentioned Factorio. Programmer crack.
Don’t know if it counts but did anyone else like the close combat series? I only ever played the first one because the others were PC only. I’ve even bought a few of the later ones recently on GOG, but I can’t get them to run with WINE.
I've played a few of these; I think I liked the Battle of the Bulge episode best (pacier than the preceding episodes). The first was really slow-moving. A Bridge Too Far was annoying.
CC3: The Russian Front was amazing! It feels kind of like it fits into a separate genre of “digital tabletop war games” (due to the fact that you pick your units from a large roster using points, rather than build them in-game, and had a focus on campaigns where the balance of power swung back and forth).
The demo of the British one (CC2 maybe?) was the one that got me into it.
I think they were remade by another company a few years back actually - but I’d definitely throw money at a modernized take on a similar concept.
Does anyone know other similar games?
The demo of the British one (CC2 maybe?) was the one that got me into it.
I think they were remade by another company a few years back actually - but I’d definitely throw money at a modernized take on a similar concept.
Does anyone know other similar games?
Though this is a blog post, I thought the article was rather amateurish, and does not analyse the matter with the depth and precision required.
I used to like rts while I was younger, but now I find them too gamified, in the sense there is too much of abstract ion. You give a building order and a fully built ship materializes in seconds. Each of your men-at-arms are having the exact same stats, personal lity and skills. Individual units are pea-brained. The number of units are too less to how historical battles actually happened.
Sometime I thought paradox style grand strategy was the answer to these flaws. But playing them now feels like playing cashgrab mobile "waiting games", you essentially set something up and are just waiting most of the time for the clock to tick till the progress bar reaches 100%, that is, it had kind of ended up even more gamified.
Perhaps there is a divergence in player interests, some want simulations with toy soldiers, while others want a competitive experience, and may be there is no easy way to cover both these aspects in a single game.
I used to like rts while I was younger, but now I find them too gamified, in the sense there is too much of abstract ion. You give a building order and a fully built ship materializes in seconds. Each of your men-at-arms are having the exact same stats, personal lity and skills. Individual units are pea-brained. The number of units are too less to how historical battles actually happened.
Sometime I thought paradox style grand strategy was the answer to these flaws. But playing them now feels like playing cashgrab mobile "waiting games", you essentially set something up and are just waiting most of the time for the clock to tick till the progress bar reaches 100%, that is, it had kind of ended up even more gamified.
Perhaps there is a divergence in player interests, some want simulations with toy soldiers, while others want a competitive experience, and may be there is no easy way to cover both these aspects in a single game.
I don't play games much anymore, but when I did, I always had an affinity for RTS games(Command and Conquer, Age of Empires, Warcraft, etc), and Action RPGs (Diablo, Torchlight).
It's exhausting to find games nowadays that don't nickel and dime you to succeed. I like the Kingdom Rush Tower Defense games on iPad when I'm traveling. Any other suggestions?
It's exhausting to find games nowadays that don't nickel and dime you to succeed. I like the Kingdom Rush Tower Defense games on iPad when I'm traveling. Any other suggestions?
0AD is pretty good.
Also this game is fully open source and is a great resource if you are learning something like Blender or want to dev a game / side mod in .js ... https://github.com/0ad/0ad
I second this. It can be played with a very modest laptop, also.
It's also surprisingly complete and polished for an open source game. Recommended.
Frostpunk is like a modern CoC or Warcraft, but the story is so so dark. Actually maybe closer to a Civ game.
https://kotaku.com/you-should-be-playing-the-brutal-city-bui...
Northguard is amazing and very much a successor to the games you mentioned.
https://kotaku.com/northgard-demands-that-you-take-winter-se...
On mobile you probably would like the Auto Chess game Dota Underlords. The are the next evolution of the RTS games, that grew out of Warcraft like League of Legends.
https://kotaku.com/you-should-be-playing-the-brutal-city-bui...
Northguard is amazing and very much a successor to the games you mentioned.
https://kotaku.com/northgard-demands-that-you-take-winter-se...
On mobile you probably would like the Auto Chess game Dota Underlords. The are the next evolution of the RTS games, that grew out of Warcraft like League of Legends.
I was intrigued by "Auto Chess" so I went and looked it up, and it looks sort of like Archon crossed with an idle game. Interesting, but not really my cup of tea.
Has anyone made an up-to-date Archon lately? I know there was The Unholy War on the original PlayStation, but that was a long time ago.
Has anyone made an up-to-date Archon lately? I know there was The Unholy War on the original PlayStation, but that was a long time ago.
Bloons, despite the goofy aesthetic, is probably the most balanced and polished tower-defense game I've ever played, and mobile/tablet is its primary platform
i came here to say this. More along the lines of kingdom rush, but an excellent game. For me personally i spent ages trying to research a mobile game i could just buy and play and not be harassed for micropayments. Bloons is where i ended up. Yes, of course you can show them with extra monies but it really isn't needed at all. Excellent fun game, where you can see your progress over playing it.
Zero-K would be my RTS recommendation (it's open source!): https://zero-k.info/
For ARPGs, the elephant in the room is Path of Exile: https://www.pathofexile.com/
Neither is really viable for mobile, but I didn't quite catch whether that was a major criterion for you.
For ARPGs, the elephant in the room is Path of Exile: https://www.pathofexile.com/
Neither is really viable for mobile, but I didn't quite catch whether that was a major criterion for you.
Check out Path of Exile, it's the most interesting ARPG out there currently
The Age of Empires 2 scene is actually growing these days. There's plenty of people to play at whatever skill level you are. It's better than ever.
Take a look at They Are Billions. It’s a mixture of city-building, RTS and tower defense. Very good fun.
They are Billions is a very well made game! I like it. And it's actually a refreshingly colorful game.
The tower defense element (thousands of zombies spawning and storming your settlement) makes it a pretty punishing game: you try to frantically build out your settlement while protecting it from early waves for about two hours before the inevitable overwhelming final wave comes. You don't know until the very end whether you are doing OK or not.
The tower defense element (thousands of zombies spawning and storming your settlement) makes it a pretty punishing game: you try to frantically build out your settlement while protecting it from early waves for about two hours before the inevitable overwhelming final wave comes. You don't know until the very end whether you are doing OK or not.
In addition to the Path of Exile suggestions, I'd recommend Grim Dawn as an alternative. An extremely fun and interesting Diablo clone. Coincidentally, the prequel / same engine was used for 2006's Titan Quest, which is now available on iOS and Android. Although I haven't actually played the mobile versions, I think as per the original, there won't be any microtransactions, or multi level marketing schemes to "win", just dozens of hours of campaign. Both games are highly recommended in general, the class systems offer such interesting and unique combinations.
I like RTS games just as the next guy and I am also disappointed that cult franchises such as Age of Empires, Starcraft, Warcraft, etc stopped releasing new games. But I like Turn Based Strategy even more, franchises like Heroes of MIght and Magic, Age of Wonders, Civilization, Total War are my favorite and they are also consistently releasing new games all the time.
Recently I've been playing Total War: Three Kingdoms. Total War is a hybrid game - adventure man is turn based, but battles are real time. I was both skeptical and curious about this approach, but when I tried it I liked it. Then I read somewhere the reason of why the creators did it this way - it's because controlling a huge map with 10+ armies, economy, diplomacy, etc real time would be impossible. So essentially TBS allows the player to go at their own pace which could be one of the reasons of why RTS lost it's popularity.
Recently I've been playing Total War: Three Kingdoms. Total War is a hybrid game - adventure man is turn based, but battles are real time. I was both skeptical and curious about this approach, but when I tried it I liked it. Then I read somewhere the reason of why the creators did it this way - it's because controlling a huge map with 10+ armies, economy, diplomacy, etc real time would be impossible. So essentially TBS allows the player to go at their own pace which could be one of the reasons of why RTS lost it's popularity.
If you like the Civ and HOMM series, you might wish to try Endless Space 2 as well.
It's perhaps the best TBS I've ever played, and I started with the original Civ.
(Actually, before all that I played Might and Magic on my C64, but that wasn't TBS.)
It's perhaps the best TBS I've ever played, and I started with the original Civ.
(Actually, before all that I played Might and Magic on my C64, but that wasn't TBS.)
Want to chip in here, love Endless Space 2! It takes a bit to get used to but it's so fun to just play even if I'm not winning.
I don’t have an answer either. Playing a lot of SC2 and waiting for Homeworld 3. 2022 ETA though. My main explanation is more recent strategy games have been a let down and as graphics don’t matter as much, players stick to old games discouraging even more game studios to try again.
I posted something similar in a child comment but wanted to see if anyone had suggestions:
I bought an iPad excited for a generation of touch-optimizes RTS games and have been...disappointed. I played around with some of the MOBAs (Vainglory, etc) but that genre isn’t for me.
Are there any great (or even decent) iOS games that fit the RTS bill? I see a ton in the App Store that match the description but most just end up being free to play micro transaction gambling/monetization pits of despair, not actual RTS.
Suggestions appreciated!
I bought an iPad excited for a generation of touch-optimizes RTS games and have been...disappointed. I played around with some of the MOBAs (Vainglory, etc) but that genre isn’t for me.
Are there any great (or even decent) iOS games that fit the RTS bill? I see a ton in the App Store that match the description but most just end up being free to play micro transaction gambling/monetization pits of despair, not actual RTS.
Suggestions appreciated!
I have two: “rymdkapsel” is very in the category, no multiplayer but single player kept me occupied for a time. “Mini-Metro” I think is kinda in the category but with a lot more replayability. Neither have iaps but have a small upfront cost.
Super cool. Thanks for the suggestions! Will check them out.
Theres a really good community made client for 'Supreme Commander'
https://www.faforever.com/
https://www.faforever.com/
This is pretty cool. Did they fix issues that caused games to crash after a few hours? Even loading up the state of a game that had been long would cause it to crash again. My guess is a memory leak.
I suspect so. I play a lot of this and things are pretty stable. They did a lot of patching and reworking in combination with the original files. The reason for tying your steam copy of SupCom:FA to the FAF code is to avoid legal issues with the community patching using the original assets.
RTS works surprisingly great in VR.
One of the best games I have played in recent years is Hidden Paths Brass Tactics.
I really don't understand why this game didn't get more attention than it did.
One of the best games I have played in recent years is Hidden Paths Brass Tactics.
I really don't understand why this game didn't get more attention than it did.
For AOE fans, AOE has a DE in Steam, pretty graphics for large screens and new music, though underlying game remains the same it seems.
AOE-2 has a HD version for large screens, but DE with pretty graphics are coming this November(2019).
Even though I haven't played games for years, coming back to AOE was nostalgic and last Friday I was lost in the game for 5+ hours, still as fun as ever. (:
*DE - Definitive Edition
AOE-2 has a HD version for large screens, but DE with pretty graphics are coming this November(2019).
Even though I haven't played games for years, coming back to AOE was nostalgic and last Friday I was lost in the game for 5+ hours, still as fun as ever. (:
*DE - Definitive Edition
I play older games, the ones without a forced online requirement or telemetry.
I wonder if this colors the author's statistics, because he is getting his statistics from games that collect them.
I have a library of steam games I downloaded then have been playing in offline mode for quite some time.
free to play? (grind or pay) bah.
I would love to hear people's suggestions for favorite offline games.
I wonder if this colors the author's statistics, because he is getting his statistics from games that collect them.
I have a library of steam games I downloaded then have been playing in offline mode for quite some time.
free to play? (grind or pay) bah.
I would love to hear people's suggestions for favorite offline games.
Myth II was my favorite game of the era. There were also a number of community created scenarios created for it. Highly recommended if you can get you hands on a CD for it. Not sure how well it still runs (or not) under Windows but it still runs great on Linux under Wine.
It lives on as Project Magma (http://projectmagma.net/) but the scenarios that shipped with Myth II are what made the game for me.
It lives on as Project Magma (http://projectmagma.net/) but the scenarios that shipped with Myth II are what made the game for me.
While both great games (we ignore III), the Myth games were better classified as real time tactics, not real time strategy. There is no growth past the beginning of a campaign. There is only range, terrain, and formations (veteran survivor prowess notwithstanding) until your units die. Also carpet bombing, remote lightning, and phantom trow kick glitch attacks. I'm not crying, you're crying.
To this day, though, I don't think a better pair of games has been made, and I will always be sad about Bungie abandoning the franchise during the Microsoft purchase.
To this day, though, I don't think a better pair of games has been made, and I will always be sad about Bungie abandoning the franchise during the Microsoft purchase.
The last RTS I really enjoyed was Total Annihilation, but recently I gave Factorio a try and got pretty addicted. Great game.
Have you tried Supreme Commander? It's the spiritual successor to TA and is amazing. There's a community lobby, Forged Alliance Forever, that has a solid number of active players.
I've never actually played Supreme Commander Forged Alliance or any of the Supreme Commander titles. But I love watching gameplay of it.
Gyle's channel on Youtube has some of the best replays around if you're like me and just like watching competitive RTS gaming.
https://www.youtube.com/user/felixlighta
Gyle's channel on Youtube has some of the best replays around if you're like me and just like watching competitive RTS gaming.
https://www.youtube.com/user/felixlighta
Should I play 1 or 2?
https://www.faforever.com is a community lobby/patch for SupCom:FA (first series). They continue to patch it and support the multiplayer lobby.
SupCom 2 was hot trash. An attempt to make an RTS xbox friendly. Some of the worst voice acting in decades of gaming.
SupCom 2 was hot trash. An attempt to make an RTS xbox friendly. Some of the worst voice acting in decades of gaming.
Not 2; that's a whole different beast that was not well received. Play Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance, which is more or less v. 1.5, and widely considered to be the pinnacle of the series.
The original Supreme Commander is not bad as well and interesting if you want to see the storyline that Forged Alliance sprang from.
The original Supreme Commander is not bad as well and interesting if you want to see the storyline that Forged Alliance sprang from.
It really is a shame that Cavedog died shortly after birthing Total Annihilation: Kingdoms.
Warcraft Reforged is about to be launched so it's not all lost
Late to the party, but worth throwing the browser rebuild of tiberium wars out there.
- https://www.adityaravishankar.com/projects/games/command-and...
- https://www.adityaravishankar.com/projects/games/command-and...
Tiberian Dawn, not Tiberium Wars. TW is CNC3 and in 3D, TD is the very first one.
For a minute I got excited...
For a minute I got excited...
The rise of internet enabled microtransactions and the masses bought drm laden games they didn't own like mmo's...
Once the masses fell for mainframe/dumb client, companies now controlled the software and could insert bs monetization.
All game design has been effected since game companies took control of game software starting from 1997 onlward with the release of ultima online.
The whole project was to undermine game ownership from the very get go.
Here's the game industry gloating of it's great victory of the PC gaming masses:
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-04-01-making-pir...
Once the masses fell for mainframe/dumb client, companies now controlled the software and could insert bs monetization.
All game design has been effected since game companies took control of game software starting from 1997 onlward with the release of ultima online.
The whole project was to undermine game ownership from the very get go.
Here's the game industry gloating of it's great victory of the PC gaming masses:
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-04-01-making-pir...
Not RTS, but certainly real time, and as old as the hills.
Railroad Tycoon
The sequels never really did it for me. Transport Tycoon sucked up the hours, but nothing really did it as much as the feel of that first game. Maybe it was the time — the CGA monitor (which couldn’t cope with Civilisation), no mouse of course. I did play it years later and it want the same.
I doubt that feeling can be recaptured. It probably never existed - its a sepia tomes memory of a feeling from a different time with different expectations - but for some reasons the original Railroad Tycoon really stuck with me.
Railroad Tycoon
The sequels never really did it for me. Transport Tycoon sucked up the hours, but nothing really did it as much as the feel of that first game. Maybe it was the time — the CGA monitor (which couldn’t cope with Civilisation), no mouse of course. I did play it years later and it want the same.
I doubt that feeling can be recaptured. It probably never existed - its a sepia tomes memory of a feeling from a different time with different expectations - but for some reasons the original Railroad Tycoon really stuck with me.
You might want to check out Railway Empire, it’s considered a spiritual successor.
The map missions in Railway Empire make it a lot less like Railroad Tycoon than what I'd want. What really made RT great was the open ended ways to succeed, while the very focused missions in RE too often forces me to build specific things in specific order. I really miss the freedom the map objectives in RT3 gave me.
That said, it is a great game and it is one of the highlights of the railroad-building genre.
That said, it is a great game and it is one of the highlights of the railroad-building genre.
If you're looking for a modern derivative of Railroad Tycoon, you may enjoy Transport Fever. You'll find its demand-driven economy familiar, and staying solvent in the early game is tricky. Fever places a bigger emphasis on terrain—managing grade and turn radius to improve the speed (and profitability) of your vehicles.
I think this is a common enough sentiment. Your first games leave more of an impact and that feeling is often not really related to how good the game is. Just like comfort food, they're comfort games.
I never player Railroad Tycoon, my first in that genre was Transport Tycoon Deluxe, but I feel pretty much the same way about it, and I'm pretty lucky that OpenTTD exists.
Similarly there's a game called Star Reach (also known as Space Federation) that was the first strategy game I played. In retrospect, it was pretty bad, but sometimes I want to play a space game and not even much superior games like Masters of Orion or more modern games like Sins of a Solar Empire will satisfy the particular craving like Star Reach.
I never player Railroad Tycoon, my first in that genre was Transport Tycoon Deluxe, but I feel pretty much the same way about it, and I'm pretty lucky that OpenTTD exists.
Similarly there's a game called Star Reach (also known as Space Federation) that was the first strategy game I played. In retrospect, it was pretty bad, but sometimes I want to play a space game and not even much superior games like Masters of Orion or more modern games like Sins of a Solar Empire will satisfy the particular craving like Star Reach.
Playing TT the first time, was the second time of my life I've ever done an all-nighter. I think I must've been 13 or 14 at the time. I'd only realized how much time had passed when my mom walked into the room at 6AM in the morning.
Then I was lucky to find TTD on some abandonware sites, shortly thereafter, the first TTD-Patch became available, and a few years later OpenTTD development started. I still remember playing it on a Nokia 5530 XM, they had actually ported it to the Symbian OS.
A few years ago, I learned that Chris Sawyer had programmed the entire thing in Assembly. It ran super-smooth on almost anything.
Then I was lucky to find TTD on some abandonware sites, shortly thereafter, the first TTD-Patch became available, and a few years later OpenTTD development started. I still remember playing it on a Nokia 5530 XM, they had actually ported it to the Symbian OS.
A few years ago, I learned that Chris Sawyer had programmed the entire thing in Assembly. It ran super-smooth on almost anything.
I've been meaning to cash in on this for a while.
Too bad that I overcomplicate everything I try to do and accomplish nothing...
Anyway, great post! This guy is very right, hopefully we start getting good strategy games soon.
Too bad that I overcomplicate everything I try to do and accomplish nothing...
Anyway, great post! This guy is very right, hopefully we start getting good strategy games soon.
Starcraft is still very much around.
But I suspect people went to mobas like League of Legends because they wanted a more social, team based experience and they liked playing a hero.
But I suspect people went to mobas like League of Legends because they wanted a more social, team based experience and they liked playing a hero.
I think Starcraft was actually part of what pushed people away from the RTS genre and into MOBAs. Blizzard deliberately made WC3 and then SC2 much faster-paced and more micro-based variants of their predecessors. Then they started pushing the e-sports angle, which in my opinion made it even less about the traditional strategy elements of RTS and more about APS, multi-tasking, ability matching, etc.
MOBAs are then the natural step from fast-paced micro-heavy RTS - strip out the base building part and make it 100% about micro, abilities, and squad control. It's the evolution of what happens when RTS gets ADD. In a way, I think Blizzard basically gave kids candy instead of vegetables and now the mainstream player attention span isn't there for traditional RTS games anymore.
MOBAs are then the natural step from fast-paced micro-heavy RTS - strip out the base building part and make it 100% about micro, abilities, and squad control. It's the evolution of what happens when RTS gets ADD. In a way, I think Blizzard basically gave kids candy instead of vegetables and now the mainstream player attention span isn't there for traditional RTS games anymore.
Heh, Brood War is FAR more micro intensive than SC2, mostly by virtue of the game interface; terrible unit pathing, 12 unit selection limit, no "smart casting" etc. Add to that more cumbersome macro mechanics and the game is much more difficult and twitchy to play effectively than it's successor. Though I'll agree that SC2 is faster paced, especially with the 12 worker start since LOTV
WC3 was more hero focused, like MOBA's, which of course had their start in WC3 as custom maps.
It is of course ironic that Blizzard inadvertently spawned a genre that ended up crushing them in a field that arguably they also pioneered, e-sports.
WC3 was more hero focused, like MOBA's, which of course had their start in WC3 as custom maps.
It is of course ironic that Blizzard inadvertently spawned a genre that ended up crushing them in a field that arguably they also pioneered, e-sports.
It's worse yet, as someone who started with the very first RTS (Dune) all the way to League of Legends, in most games your teammates have zero concept of late-game or playing defense. If they're not destroying from the start it's time to give up. The game is very good if played properly. No one is good enough at lower skill levels that better teamwork can't allow a come back from behind. Which is an amazing feeling.
For me, the test of a good game is if it's fun even if you're losing, which is the case with LoL but not as much with most traditional RTS.
For me, the test of a good game is if it's fun even if you're losing, which is the case with LoL but not as much with most traditional RTS.
Also Microsoft is working on Age of Empires IV which will be huge.
I doubt it. Age of Empires 2 is pretty much the entire AoE scene left. And Age of Empires 2 definitive edition (AoE2DE) is coming out soon. And that'll only work if it accurately recreates the AoE2 experience with better graphics and slightly better interface.
I expect any modern non-AoE2 AoE game to be just as bad as any other modern RTS. Even AOE2 DE was/is probably going to be requiring Win 10 just to force people to upgrade. MS is still MS.
I expect any modern non-AoE2 AoE game to be just as bad as any other modern RTS. Even AOE2 DE was/is probably going to be requiring Win 10 just to force people to upgrade. MS is still MS.
Not an unreasonable request, Windows 7 is a decade old. Computers are tools and you need to keep your tools up to date, at least if you're not writing the code yourself to keep it secure and running.
Not unreasonable in general but there's absolutely no reason that AoE2DE needs to use DX12 and the Win 10 requirements that come with it. And there's a significant reason why they shouldn't.
A large fraction of the player population is in countries without access to large purchasing power or modern computing equipment. If it requires 10 then a large part of the playerbase will simply stick with AoE2 AoC on voobly or HD on steam. So DE will only be new players or players in rich western economies. MS is showing they either don't care or don't understand the AoE2 scene.
A large fraction of the player population is in countries without access to large purchasing power or modern computing equipment. If it requires 10 then a large part of the playerbase will simply stick with AoE2 AoC on voobly or HD on steam. So DE will only be new players or players in rich western economies. MS is showing they either don't care or don't understand the AoE2 scene.
Windows 7 mainstream support ended in 2015 and extended support ends in 2 1/2 months. I can't wrap my head around why I would support that, encouraging people to stay on an OS that is insecure. It would make more sense to support a current RHEL-based LTS release. An option for unsupported systems will be streaming, given their investment in Azure Gaming. I don't disagree there's no technical argument to not be DX12-only but I would've only agreed with your stance a year or 2 ago, not this close to the extended support ending on Windows 7. There's always a cut off point and today seems reasonable for titles still in development.
One thing Microsoft does need to do is offer an ad-supported, Microsoft Store only, free-of-charge Windows-S 10 to everyone to download. Since it would only support their stuff, it could be optimized to run on lower end hardware.
One thing Microsoft does need to do is offer an ad-supported, Microsoft Store only, free-of-charge Windows-S 10 to everyone to download. Since it would only support their stuff, it could be optimized to run on lower end hardware.
>An option for unsupported systems will be streaming,
Do you think a pay subscription using up bandwidth like that is going to work for the vast majority of the low income, very international, old hardware AoE2 scene? It won't. Just like trying to force them up upgrade to 10 won't. They don't care because they don't think they can make money off those people. You don't care because you don't understand. But both you and MS don't understand that they are the AoE2 pro and ranked scene and that by ignoring them AoE2DE is going to be a flash in the pan and everyone will go back to playing AoE2 patched on voobly.
Do you think a pay subscription using up bandwidth like that is going to work for the vast majority of the low income, very international, old hardware AoE2 scene? It won't. Just like trying to force them up upgrade to 10 won't. They don't care because they don't think they can make money off those people. You don't care because you don't understand. But both you and MS don't understand that they are the AoE2 pro and ranked scene and that by ignoring them AoE2DE is going to be a flash in the pan and everyone will go back to playing AoE2 patched on voobly.
I care that those people are on supported software, not insecure versions that are unsupported. You're welcome to hold out on old hardware, no one is offended, but don't expect MS to support unsupported operating systems. That's doing no one a favor.
There's plenty of old hardware scenes and gamers, and has been for a long time before AOE2. It is important if MS can make money off people, because without that incentive there never would've been an AOE2 to begin with. So I'd save your dinars for that upgrade.
There's plenty of old hardware scenes and gamers, and has been for a long time before AOE2. It is important if MS can make money off people, because without that incentive there never would've been an AOE2 to begin with. So I'd save your dinars for that upgrade.
They Are Billions is amazing.
As someone who's favorite game genre is RTS and all-time favorite games are Warcraft 3 and Age of Empires 2, I've been wondering the same thing. I genuinely believe that RTS games are the most intellectually stimulating due to the incredible amount of strategy involved, and thus the most fun.
Recently I went to a PC Cafe after having stopped playing games about 10 years ago. I started off playing CS:GO due to having loved CS 1.6 as a child, but I didn't find the modern version fun, and after an hour I was bored. Then I played a game of Warcraft 3, and next thing you know I spent the next month completely addicted to the game, watching professional commentaries and playing nonstop. It got to a point where I literally had to uninstall the game since it was taking over my life.
The reason I think I found CS:GO boring was because it felt like there was little to no strategy. It's basically just a game of reflexes and hand-to-eye coordination, and you only control a single unit. Meanwhile I think I found WC3 so fun because there's so much to it - what buildings/units to make, whether to harass, rush, and/or turtle/tower up, scouting your opponents and adjusting to their strategy, when to expand, whether to creep / level up your heroes or go in for an attack, etc. It's like a game of chess on steroids, where your opponents' pieces are completely different (if they're a different race), yet somehow the game is remarkably balanced.
I hate to sound like an arrogant old crank and my RTS bias is definitely clear, but I feel like most of the mainstream games today suck, and are of a lower intellectual bar. I can't understand the whole MOBA thing (eg. League of Legends) - I never got into DOTA because I always found it extremely boring, and I think it's just less intellectually stimulating (and also probably because the games are an hour and a half).
I'm glad that WC3 and AOE2 are being remade and released this year (though unfortunately I'll probably have to opt out due to how easily I get addicted). I hope that more game developers will see this and try their hand at the RTS genre. As much as I love WC3 and AOE2, they certainly have their flaws as well. For example, I feel the beginning in WC3 is too slow, making buildings/units is a bit too slow, and I find it a bit too micro focused (particularly for orcs). But I absolutely love the RPG element of heroes, and it's probably one of the main reasons why I've spent more time playing WC3.
Recently I went to a PC Cafe after having stopped playing games about 10 years ago. I started off playing CS:GO due to having loved CS 1.6 as a child, but I didn't find the modern version fun, and after an hour I was bored. Then I played a game of Warcraft 3, and next thing you know I spent the next month completely addicted to the game, watching professional commentaries and playing nonstop. It got to a point where I literally had to uninstall the game since it was taking over my life.
The reason I think I found CS:GO boring was because it felt like there was little to no strategy. It's basically just a game of reflexes and hand-to-eye coordination, and you only control a single unit. Meanwhile I think I found WC3 so fun because there's so much to it - what buildings/units to make, whether to harass, rush, and/or turtle/tower up, scouting your opponents and adjusting to their strategy, when to expand, whether to creep / level up your heroes or go in for an attack, etc. It's like a game of chess on steroids, where your opponents' pieces are completely different (if they're a different race), yet somehow the game is remarkably balanced.
I hate to sound like an arrogant old crank and my RTS bias is definitely clear, but I feel like most of the mainstream games today suck, and are of a lower intellectual bar. I can't understand the whole MOBA thing (eg. League of Legends) - I never got into DOTA because I always found it extremely boring, and I think it's just less intellectually stimulating (and also probably because the games are an hour and a half).
I'm glad that WC3 and AOE2 are being remade and released this year (though unfortunately I'll probably have to opt out due to how easily I get addicted). I hope that more game developers will see this and try their hand at the RTS genre. As much as I love WC3 and AOE2, they certainly have their flaws as well. For example, I feel the beginning in WC3 is too slow, making buildings/units is a bit too slow, and I find it a bit too micro focused (particularly for orcs). But I absolutely love the RPG element of heroes, and it's probably one of the main reasons why I've spent more time playing WC3.
Unfortunately the article doesn't mention Supreme Commander - Forged Alliance, which is a game still played today with more than enough players and some very good casters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xny10Dvp_00
My take on this is that RTSs are generally unpopular because of their long feedback loop. In an FPS game, or even a modern MOBA, the decisions you take result in an almost immediate death (yours or the opponent's). If you're doing something wrong, you'll know pretty much immediately, rarely will you have to wait more than a minute between doing something wrong and getting punished for it. This also means that you tend to know what exactly you did wrong, maybe you shot too soon, maybe you aimed wrong, maybe you didn't jump enough, etc. In most game genres you go through encounters quickly: spawn, die, repeat until you get good.
RTSs are almost unique among game genres in that you're forced to make decisions quickly but the results of those decisions don't become apparent for anywhere between 10 minutes to an hour. A single "encounter" takes a good chunk of your time and your reward for that time can often be that you get to watch for 10 to 15 minutes as your best laid plans are ripped apart and everything you've built up is methodically destroyed, and at the end of it all, you can't even be sure what is it that you did wrong because you made so many decisions without seeing their immediate result. Add to that the fact that most RTSs are pretty unbalanced at any level above absolute beginner. So in the end, you're left wondering if the other guy won because you built too many kbot factories too early, or because you didn't scout enough, or because he rushed you with Flashes and those are overpowered? Did the map favor him? How do you counter a Flash rush? All those questions crop up and are really hard to answer. This makes for a frustrating experience for new and medium-skill players alike.
That said, I don't think RTSs got less popular with time in an absolute sense, I think they only got relatively less popular because gaming itself has become more mainstream. It is my belief that it takes a certain kind of personality to enjoy RTS games, which represents a certain percentage of the total human population, which is much less than the percentage of the population that can enjoy video games in general. As gaming became mainstream, the number of people enjoying RTSs stayed roughly constant, but as a percentage of all games it became smaller and smaller, thus it made no sense to keep developing RTSs. Multiplayer RTS has always been a niche genre that few people enjoyed, but when gaming was also niche it still made sense to make RTS games.
Now, when it comes to the question posed in the article, why did Blizzard's RTSs, Brood War and later WC3, got popular and stayed popular? Some people will say is that it's because it's balanced, quick and varied, but Starcraft didn't start out balanced, and it didn't get balanced until map makers learned to make balanced maps. In a sense, Starcraft is still not really balanced because you can easily make a map where one race will dominate (just try to find an Island game anywhere on ladder and you'll see what I mean, for example).
My theory for why Starcraft (and later WC3) succeeded where the others failed comes down to two things: Use Map Settings and Battle.net. I said earlier that few people enjoy multiplayer RTSs and I stand-by that, and if you spent any time on Battle.net in the early 2000s, you would see that most people didn't play Starcraft the way it was intended. UMS always had a lot more games going than regular Melee, and a large percentage of regular Melee was 7v1 computer or Faster Map Ever, No Rush 20 minutes or other things that changed the base mechanics of the game to make it a lot more forgiving. The amount of people playing actual, competitive 1v1s or 2v2s was tiny in comparison. So why didn't all those people who didn't really like RTS stuck around in an RTS game? Well because their friends were there, and all the other UMS maps were fun, if you got stomped in a bunch of 1v1s and got frustrated, you could go play some Bounds, or a Cannon Defense. Maybe an RPG or an Open RPG map, maybe The Thing, maybe Aeon of Strife for that early MOBA experience. Everything was available within that same game, and the best part was that all your friends were just an /f m away, later on even if they were playing Diablo 2 or WC3. It was pretty seamless, and other gaming services couldn't really compare until things like Steam and Xbox Live came about. You could stay in the game without ever touching the RTS portion of it, and I know a lot of people who did, and you could meet people and become friends without ever needing another method of communication besides Battle.net, all from within Starcraft (unlike most other gaming services of the time). Somewhat ironically, what made Starcraft (and later WC3) so popular are all the parts that weren't an RTS, it was a do-everything game that had a little something for everyone. All the balancing and the e-sports came later, after Starcraft had already gotten big enough and gained enough of an audience for people to learn to make balanced maps. Brood War was released in 1998, and the patches where they finally nailed the current balance came somewhere around 2001 (1.08), and by that time it was already pretty popular. I'm not sure Starcraft would have ever gotten to 1.08 without UMS and Battle.net.
This got a little long-winded, because I've spent considerable time thinking about this very topic, but my main point is that RTS (particularly the competitive multiplayer kind) as a genre has always been niche and will remain a niche genre, and the wild success of Starcraft and its successors is specifically due to the fact that it had a lot more to offer than just RTS.
RTSs are almost unique among game genres in that you're forced to make decisions quickly but the results of those decisions don't become apparent for anywhere between 10 minutes to an hour. A single "encounter" takes a good chunk of your time and your reward for that time can often be that you get to watch for 10 to 15 minutes as your best laid plans are ripped apart and everything you've built up is methodically destroyed, and at the end of it all, you can't even be sure what is it that you did wrong because you made so many decisions without seeing their immediate result. Add to that the fact that most RTSs are pretty unbalanced at any level above absolute beginner. So in the end, you're left wondering if the other guy won because you built too many kbot factories too early, or because you didn't scout enough, or because he rushed you with Flashes and those are overpowered? Did the map favor him? How do you counter a Flash rush? All those questions crop up and are really hard to answer. This makes for a frustrating experience for new and medium-skill players alike.
That said, I don't think RTSs got less popular with time in an absolute sense, I think they only got relatively less popular because gaming itself has become more mainstream. It is my belief that it takes a certain kind of personality to enjoy RTS games, which represents a certain percentage of the total human population, which is much less than the percentage of the population that can enjoy video games in general. As gaming became mainstream, the number of people enjoying RTSs stayed roughly constant, but as a percentage of all games it became smaller and smaller, thus it made no sense to keep developing RTSs. Multiplayer RTS has always been a niche genre that few people enjoyed, but when gaming was also niche it still made sense to make RTS games.
Now, when it comes to the question posed in the article, why did Blizzard's RTSs, Brood War and later WC3, got popular and stayed popular? Some people will say is that it's because it's balanced, quick and varied, but Starcraft didn't start out balanced, and it didn't get balanced until map makers learned to make balanced maps. In a sense, Starcraft is still not really balanced because you can easily make a map where one race will dominate (just try to find an Island game anywhere on ladder and you'll see what I mean, for example).
My theory for why Starcraft (and later WC3) succeeded where the others failed comes down to two things: Use Map Settings and Battle.net. I said earlier that few people enjoy multiplayer RTSs and I stand-by that, and if you spent any time on Battle.net in the early 2000s, you would see that most people didn't play Starcraft the way it was intended. UMS always had a lot more games going than regular Melee, and a large percentage of regular Melee was 7v1 computer or Faster Map Ever, No Rush 20 minutes or other things that changed the base mechanics of the game to make it a lot more forgiving. The amount of people playing actual, competitive 1v1s or 2v2s was tiny in comparison. So why didn't all those people who didn't really like RTS stuck around in an RTS game? Well because their friends were there, and all the other UMS maps were fun, if you got stomped in a bunch of 1v1s and got frustrated, you could go play some Bounds, or a Cannon Defense. Maybe an RPG or an Open RPG map, maybe The Thing, maybe Aeon of Strife for that early MOBA experience. Everything was available within that same game, and the best part was that all your friends were just an /f m away, later on even if they were playing Diablo 2 or WC3. It was pretty seamless, and other gaming services couldn't really compare until things like Steam and Xbox Live came about. You could stay in the game without ever touching the RTS portion of it, and I know a lot of people who did, and you could meet people and become friends without ever needing another method of communication besides Battle.net, all from within Starcraft (unlike most other gaming services of the time). Somewhat ironically, what made Starcraft (and later WC3) so popular are all the parts that weren't an RTS, it was a do-everything game that had a little something for everyone. All the balancing and the e-sports came later, after Starcraft had already gotten big enough and gained enough of an audience for people to learn to make balanced maps. Brood War was released in 1998, and the patches where they finally nailed the current balance came somewhere around 2001 (1.08), and by that time it was already pretty popular. I'm not sure Starcraft would have ever gotten to 1.08 without UMS and Battle.net.
This got a little long-winded, because I've spent considerable time thinking about this very topic, but my main point is that RTS (particularly the competitive multiplayer kind) as a genre has always been niche and will remain a niche genre, and the wild success of Starcraft and its successors is specifically due to the fact that it had a lot more to offer than just RTS.
I can't help but compare RTS to TBS more: Civ 2 came around the same time as SC, and the Civ series has kept growing in popularity. People are ok with the long feedback loop IMO ie. chess. The gameplay just needs to be fun and challenging-enough, which SC/BW and AOE2 had in spades for both beginners and experts. Like the OP says though, subsequent games in the original RTS mold just weren't as good.
Certainly F2P, and genre-mixing happened, but those players could still come back to playing RTSs. My main point is: what truly distinguishes Brood War from everything else is the level design and gameplay. Which is what games like They Are Billions is bringing back even if only in part. RTS level design peaked with BW it seems, and is only now making a come back. Over the past ~20 years, you can see the evolution in action/RPG/platform/sim/puzzle/TBS games as they have added to level design and gameplay where RTS games didn't and thus lost out. Focusing on what made BW good; make better level design and gameplay than BW, and you'll get people playing again.
I played Warcraft 2, SMACX, AOE2, and SC pretty much when they came out, and I've only recently played Paradox games, Homeworld and Total Annihilation. People have their favorites, and I can see liking any of these games based on the type of gameplay and story you enjoy the most. I just hope AOE4 has enough new ideas in level design and gameplay compared to AOE2 like the difference between Civ 2 and Civ 4.
You can also see what the major studios have been up to: Valve went into publishing tech, Blizzard is going more and more into F2P (Tencent is almost all F2P), but it's the studios/publishers like Square Enix, 2K, Sony, and Ubisoft and indies which keep making games that aren't lootbox filled.
Certainly F2P, and genre-mixing happened, but those players could still come back to playing RTSs. My main point is: what truly distinguishes Brood War from everything else is the level design and gameplay. Which is what games like They Are Billions is bringing back even if only in part. RTS level design peaked with BW it seems, and is only now making a come back. Over the past ~20 years, you can see the evolution in action/RPG/platform/sim/puzzle/TBS games as they have added to level design and gameplay where RTS games didn't and thus lost out. Focusing on what made BW good; make better level design and gameplay than BW, and you'll get people playing again.
I played Warcraft 2, SMACX, AOE2, and SC pretty much when they came out, and I've only recently played Paradox games, Homeworld and Total Annihilation. People have their favorites, and I can see liking any of these games based on the type of gameplay and story you enjoy the most. I just hope AOE4 has enough new ideas in level design and gameplay compared to AOE2 like the difference between Civ 2 and Civ 4.
You can also see what the major studios have been up to: Valve went into publishing tech, Blizzard is going more and more into F2P (Tencent is almost all F2P), but it's the studios/publishers like Square Enix, 2K, Sony, and Ubisoft and indies which keep making games that aren't lootbox filled.
[deleted]
The rise of internet enabled microtransactions and the masses bought drm laden games they didn't own like mmo's...
Once the masses fell for mainframe/dumb client, companies now controlled the software and could insert bs monetization.
Once the masses fell for mainframe/dumb client, companies now controlled the software and could insert bs monetization.
Its worth mentioning that there’s still some active nultiplayer communities for older RTS games around. FAForever for Supreme Commander und Massgate for World in Conflict have been around for quite some time.
www.faforever.com www.massgate.org
www.faforever.com www.massgate.org
Warzone 2100 is my favorite RTS. LAN play a lot with my kids.
https://wz2100.net/
https://wz2100.net/
It died on the alter that EA sacrificed C&C on.
they milked that cow and then cut it up for meat.
they milked that cow and then cut it up for meat.
Does he not consider Ashes of the Singularity a RTS game??
> What Happened to the Real Time Strategy Genre?
Total Annihilation
Total Annihilation
Blizzard cleaned it all up. Their games were so good no one even bothered to compete. I spent countless hours playing starcraft and warcraft. The other games didn't have the same addictive elements.
Agreed, it's a huge reason. Blizzard is the Nintendo of the PC space. Developers have noted for ages that competing on Nintendo platforms meant you had to match their 1st party titles. Which are held to a higher standard than others and don't get the reviews they deserve. There are few true competitors to the Mario games, Smash Bros, Mario Party, and Mario Kart for the same reason most people don't want to be compared to Blizzard's efforts.
I'm not saying C&C:Generals was a bad game - it was quite popular - but from design point of view it was a Starcraft clone. They abandoned the old, quirky Dune2/C&C design with low count, remote harvesters, multiple factories which only sped up the rate of production, instantly deployed buildings, instant selling etc. These things had some flaws, but also advantages, and most importantly - they resulted in a different experience. I think C&C: Red Alert 2 was the high point of that design. Optimal action speed, counters that weren't too hard, varied units.