Why did Real Time Strategy genre die out?

[Lyric Suite]

In MP it's about APM.

This is a another Codex cope. It's not just about how fast you are, it's also knowing what you are supposed to do, what tactics you are supposed to use against what at any given time.

It's also a bit amusing for Codextards to bitch about the necessity to be "fast" in a genre that's supposed to be about action by definition.

Notice that some of the best SP maps are those that force you to use the same tactics as in MP. Blizzard did that often.

RTS games that don't require APM, micro or knowledge of tactics are usually the ones where you can just turtle indefinitely then crush the enemy base after ammassing an army composed entirely of the same unit, usually the strongest one you got. Some of the older RTS games could be cheesed that way, up to including Starcraft if you are hell bent enough to do that (though at the very least in Starcraft you are still forced to expand and create more than one base).

There's some maps in Warcraft 3 that actually play out like a MP match, like Balancing the Scales in Frozen Throne. Those are generally the best maps.

All this kvetching about "muh strategy" is missing the point of those games entirely. It was always about action, and if you aren't doing micro you are doing this:

 

[rumSaint]

In MP it's about APM.

This is a another Codex cope. It's not just about how fast you are, it's also knowing what you are supposed to do, what tactics you are supposed to use against what at any given time.

It's also a bit amusing for Codextards to bitch about the necessity to be "fast" in a genre that's supposed to be about action by definition.

Notice that some of the best SP maps are those that force you to use the same tactics as in MP. Blizzard did that often.

RTS games that don't require APM, micro or knowledge of tactics are usually the ones where you can just turtle indefinitely then crush the enemy base after ammassing an army composed entirely of the same unit, usually the strongest one you got. Some of the older RTS games could be cheesed that way, up to including Starcraft if you are hell bent enough to do that (though at the very least in Starcraft you are still forced to expand and create more than one base).

There's some maps in Warcraft 3 that actually play out like a MP match, like Balancing the Scales in Frozen Throne. Those are generally the best maps.

All this kvetching about "muh strategy" is missing the point of those games entirely. It was always about action, and if you aren't doing micro you are doing this:

It is. You need to have some level of good APM otherwise enemy gets time and resorces advantage. You are required to be able to fight on multiple fronts, or know how to fast build chains for certain units and upgrades.

Of course in mid level play there are various factors as people have some level of knowledge, strategy and APM and someone with better tactical approach can cover for his weaker skills.

On top level. Well. It's all about APM.

 

[kinzadza]

It's not "all about APM".

Even people with 400+ apm spam a lot of actions that inflates the number.

There are examples in starcraft broodwar where top pros had low apm, like Stork, who is one of the best players of all time. He had around 250 apm, and the average pro had over 400. He was still one of the best players.

Also to be that fast you need to know EXACTLY what you are doing the entire time, it's not just a muscle memory thing.

 

[rumSaint]

They are spamming actions same way as CS players switch weapons. It's to keep mind occupied and in game to not get distracted.

When you play this much as pro it becomes a muscle memory.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Every situation requires the approriate tactic and you need to be able to execute it on a pinch. You also need to be know before hand what the other player is doing before committing to a specific strategy, which involves scouting and knowledge of what the other guy is planning to do.

MP RTS games were always very complex and required a lot of meta, technical knowledge about how everything in the game works and you needed to learn plenty of tactics and strategies. What you CAN'T do is LARP as your own strategic commando in your head. You need to do the things that actually work or you can't win, which, for the record, is how war works in real life to begin with.

Personally, i don't see anything wrong with how MP worked in those games. I think the bigger issue is how one can go about fixing the single player, because i think that's the aspect that needed work the most, and focusing more on LARPing probably wouldn't have been a bad thing. In a way, Blizzard already tried in their single player campaigns, up to and including SC2 (mission design in that game being one of the things it actually did well). Some people don't like that style, preferring traditional "skirmish" maps, but the weakness of the AI is precisely why skirmish is seen as a waste of time by most people:



Back then when i was into the game, i even managed to beat three AI opponents on insane myself, with my less than stellar skills.

As far as i can see, anybody trying to ressurect this genre has two main obstacles. One, the MP is exctreley difficult to get right, and it's no joke to design something that can compete with the standard set by Blizzard. Second, they would have to set out to revolutionaize how the single player works in some way. Given the general trend of "retro" games, i doubt either of those things are going to happen. Devs today have neither the know how to make a MP game like Starcraft nor the creativity to push the genre forward beyond what it achieved back in the 90s.

 

[rumSaint]

Dawn of War 2 was actually surprisingly fun. It had single player, coop and pretty cool multiplayer which is still active.
Imho it was good title that streamlined base building aspect (which I personally hate the most in RTS).

 

[tritosine2k]

Well tower defense became its own thing bc. stuck in rut and RTS are synonyms.

 

[Baron Tahn]

DoW2 also has that MP arena vs waves of enemies mode that still kinda rules and was a very good idea - avoids the usual competition hole that these games end up in and allowed for some fun team play. Still got pretty intense in later levels.

 

[rumSaint]

DoW2 also has that MP arena vs waves of enemies mode that still kinda rules and was a very good idea - avoids the usual competition hole that these games end up in and allowed for some fun team play. Still got pretty intense in later levels.

Haha I remember playing with some randos and they were spamming chat with waaagh and for the emprah, as they were orks and spees mahreens. Good times.

 

[Fedora Master]

I think Google might be scraping my Codex activity, this just popped up in my suggestions:


(Age of Empires is not as good as you remember. fyi)

 

[Lyric Suite]

I think it ought to be "thoughts" per second, not action per second. That was my hurdle when i tried to play WC3 at an higher level. I could never remember the counter in time, would always forget something while busy doing something else etc. When you watch the pros play, they never make those kind of mistakes.

 

[Dr1f7]

I think part of the reason is that people seem to be drawn towards team based games. Most popular games are online and are team based. Gaming has become a "social" hobby over the years.

Dueling is way more punishing and somewhat personal even, you have no team mates to rely on support or to blame for your own fuckups, they require some introspection and learning from your own mistakes instead of always blaming others. If you get a horrible rank it's all on you. Team based games are so much easier to get into, you can join your friends who can be much better at the game and they can carry you without you even realizing how bad you actually are.

but WC3 is a great team-based game!

 

[Fedora Master]

I tried playing the remaster of AoE1 the other day but the pathfinding was still shitassfuckbutt so I dropped it again.

 

[Odoryuk]

They are spamming actions same way as CS players switch weapons. It's to keep mind occupied and in game to not get distracted.

Oh so that's why they all do it!

 

[Damned Registrations]

I think a major problem is that the genre never really went anywhere. Aside from AI Wars and Factorio(which were both fucking awesome) pretty much all RTS plays the same way since Dune 2. You gather resources, make buildings that make units, then walk the little men over to the other side and win. Campaigns can change that up, but then it's usually just skipping the first two steps and having you move a limited army you had no input in making.

When the gameplay is so similar between different games, it gets dull really fast, especially the early missions where the game feels the need to explain to you shit you learned 20 years ago. But even when you get past that it's boring in another way: the same old tricks as before, like turtling and exploiting choke points, work in every game.

And when you go to multiplayer, as others have mentioned, there's a massive cliff in the difficulty before you can express any sort of creativity. Better memorize 30 build orders so you can recognize which units your opponent will have 90 seconds from now and where by seeing his base for 2 seconds with your worker scout. On top of that, you'll spend more than half your attention staring at your own fucking base, micromanaging stupid shit to spend your resources as efficiently as possible. Who the fuck wants to play a game about commanding armies where you don't even get to watch them fight half the time becaue it's more important you spawn larva, spread creep, drop mules, and chronoboost buildings? Fuck that shit. AoE isn't any better with it's economy.

RTS genre died because developers have been phoning it in and the core gameplay is boring once the novelty wears off. The hilarious part is, the fucking players have had dozens of brilliant ideas on what to do to make the genre more interesting; tower defense games and mobas got picked up, but there were plenty of other cool ideas too, and elements of these things should have been incorporated into an RTS instead of just ported into standalone games.

How about a game structured like a moba, but you command the base instead of the heroes, deploying towers and buildings to produce a stronger stream of units, control over areas of the map, aid the heroes, and so forth? Hell, make it asymmetrical co-op with different roles working together. I'd play the hell out of that. They are billions /almost/ made an interesting RTS with hefty tower defense elements, but focused too much on the gimmick of many units dying in a kill zone. But the basic premise of a survival/defense focused RTS was a good one that should have been taken further. Again, throw in a multiplayer mode with a player controlling the zombies and you'd have something much better than traditional RTS multiplayer. Make players actually have to examine terrain and base structure and adapt strategies on the fly instead of picking an opening and picking one of two slight variations based on what opening the enemy used.

How about a game focused on heroes, where you need to bring back resources and complete tasks to aid your home base. You could have the gameplay broken up into exploring, dueling other heroes, fighting amongst armies you have limited control over, raiding enemy supply lines or providing distractions to pull enemy forces out of position so the main army can hit harder. Again, you could do a whole game around this concept or make it even better by having multiple roles filled by different players.

Instead we get everyone trying to copy Dune 2 over and over again. Go ahead, go play the gray goo game nobody gave a fuck about. Tell me how it's a crying shame it's not super popular and there should be 20 more games just like it. Theres some new one coming out too that basically starcraft 2's spiritual successor made by some streamers or some shit. Not even slightly interested in that.

 

[Lucumo]

So they should forget multiplayer, and even forget massive single player campaigns, and instead focus on depth: introduce super deep supply chains (e.g. mine iron here, smelt it into steel here, have the blacksmith turn the steel into swords, have the peasants train here, give them swords, turn them into men-at-arms, etc)

Done in the 90s already, see Settlers III. Settlers I and II had the supply chain stuff already as well but you couldn't yet directly command your units.

[...]introduce unit experience, so units can level up and rise in rank, have systems that affect areas, and many other things like that. THAT is where the real potential of RTSs is, imo.

So...like C&C: Red Alert 2?

Honestly, people in this thread seem to not have much of a clue about RTS games. Same when it comes to the multiplayer aspects.

 

[Tyranicon]

Regardless of whether or not you consider Homeworld a "real" RTS, it's hilarious watching the disaster clownshow of the HM3 launch.

I think the answer at the end of the day to the OP question is really just "devs aren't good enough to make 'em anymore."

 

[Desman]

It died for the same reasons than the 1v1 FPS shooters like Quake.
It's a very competitive genre and it's not really fun to play if you always get smashed online. Also when you get destroyed you can't blame your team like in CS or LoL.
In some sense it's a reality check about video game skills like when you think you are good at sports and you actually try to play in a club (you will get crushed if you are not genuinely good), also you will have a "i'm too old for this shit moment" at one point and younger players are just not attracted by the genre so the player base dwindle.

Also as explained before the genre is pretty stale if you are interested by the solo side.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

So...like C&C: Red Alert 2?

Warzone 2100 had that as well. Shame Pumpkin Studios died shortly after the game didn't sell well. It was pretty good.

 

[Lucumo]

So...like C&C: Red Alert 2?

Warzone 2100 had that as well. Shame Pumpkin Studios died shortly after the game didn't sell well. It was pretty good.

Yeah, the late 90s/early 00s were the absolute peak in the RTS genre. So many really good games came out in a relatively short time span that a lot of them really didn't get the recognition they deserved.

 

[Desman]

It's not "all about APM".

Even people with 400+ apm spam a lot of actions that inflates the number.

There are examples in starcraft broodwar where top pros had low apm, like Stork, who is one of the best players of all time. He had around 250 apm, and the average pro had over 400. He was still one of the best players.

Also to be that fast you need to know EXACTLY what you are doing the entire time, it's not just a muscle memory thing.

He plays protoss bro, you could be a really strong player (not Korean pro level but like top non Korean) with 130 apm back in the day.

The "strategy vs apm" debate is pretty funny like obviously in RTS at one point once the game is kinda "figured out" the best players are the guys with the best execution and multitasking micro/macro (especially in games like broodwar with oldschool UI) but in FPS like quake the best players are not necessilary the guys with the best aim or reflexes, it's the guys who have the best map control and memory. Ironically the shooter game often ends up being more "strategic" than the RTS game.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Yeah, the late 90s/early 00s were the absolute peak in the RTS genre. So many really good games came out in a relatively short time span that a lot of them really didn't get the recognition they deserved.

Submarine Titans, Metal Fatigue, Warzone 2100, and so on. I don't think any of these were successful, but every single one of them was really awesome. You're right, it was such a hot genre after Starcraft and Total Annihilation came out that there was just way too much competition. Even Total Annihilation: Kingdoms, which had the Total Annihilation success to stand on, flopped. I know the Total Annihilation community was highly mixed on the new title at the time, but it still never sold well.

There were 41 RTS games released in 1998. 20 released in 1999. 35 released in 2000. 41 released in 2001. 25 released in 2002.

Given the longevity of the RTS, there's no way many enthusiasts would be playing all those or even most of them. When you buy an RTS, and you like it, chances are that you're going to be playing that for months, if not a year or more. That doesn't leave much room to buy 10 a year, let alone 41. You might hop on to something new, like Homeworld, and play it until you get bored with it. I think I played Total Annihilation off and on from 1998 to the early 2000s, despite buying Homeworld and a few others. I'd play around with them and then go back to Total Annihilation.

 

[Johannes]

It's not "all about APM".

Even people with 400+ apm spam a lot of actions that inflates the number.

There are examples in starcraft broodwar where top pros had low apm, like Stork, who is one of the best players of all time. He had around 250 apm, and the average pro had over 400. He was still one of the best players.

Also to be that fast you need to know EXACTLY what you are doing the entire time, it's not just a muscle memory thing.

He plays protoss bro, you could be a really strong player (not Korean pro level but like top non Korean) with 130 apm back in the day.

The "strategy vs apm" debate is pretty funny like obviously in RTS at one point once the game is kinda "figured out" the best players are the guys with the best execution and multitasking micro/macro (especially in games like broodwar with oldschool UI) but in FPS like quake the best players are not necessilary the guys with the best aim or reflexes, it's the guys who have the best map control and memory. Ironically the shooter game often ends up being more "strategic" than the RTS game.

What does it mean that a game is "figured out"? It doesn't mean anyone can just simply check what the best strategies are, and then focus on the execution. No, it means that the top people are so good at understanding the strategy of the game, that it comes to really tiny nuances - not just differences in unit control, but ever developing better understanding of what to do when you see your opponent doing this or that.

 

[Lucumo]

Given the longevity of the RTS, there's no way many enthusiasts would be playing all those or even most of them. When you buy an RTS, and you like it, chances are that you're going to be playing that for months, if not a year or more. That doesn't leave much room to buy 10 a year, let alone 41. You might hop on to something new, like Homeworld, and play it until you get bored with it. I think I played Total Annihilation off and on from 1998 to the early 2000s, despite buying Homeworld and a few others. I'd play around with them and then go back to Total Annihilation.

Yep, some RTS games lent themselves better to skirmish mode. For me that was Age of Empires II and then Empire Earth. However, in multiplayer, a lot of games were really fun. I know I went several times to my best friend very early on Saturday morning to play games via LAN straight from 7:00 till 20:00. Apart from the aforementioned two, Battle Realms, Cossacks: European Wars and Spellforce definitely played their role.
Of course, some RTS games had no skirmish mode/free play and those were more of a play & done affair. Like Sudden Strike, Sacrifice, Robo Rumble (IIRC) etc.

It's not "all about APM".

Even people with 400+ apm spam a lot of actions that inflates the number.

There are examples in starcraft broodwar where top pros had low apm, like Stork, who is one of the best players of all time. He had around 250 apm, and the average pro had over 400. He was still one of the best players.

Also to be that fast you need to know EXACTLY what you are doing the entire time, it's not just a muscle memory thing.

He plays protoss bro, you could be a really strong player (not Korean pro level but like top non Korean) with 130 apm back in the day.

The "strategy vs apm" debate is pretty funny like obviously in RTS at one point once the game is kinda "figured out" the best players are the guys with the best execution and multitasking micro/macro (especially in games like broodwar with oldschool UI) but in FPS like quake the best players are not necessilary the guys with the best aim or reflexes, it's the guys who have the best map control and memory. Ironically the shooter game often ends up being more "strategic" than the RTS game.

What does it mean that a game is "figured out"? It doesn't mean anyone can just simply check what the best strategies are, and then focus on the execution. No, it means that the top people are so good at understanding the strategy of the game, that it comes to really tiny nuances - not just differences in unit control, but ever developing better understanding of what to do when you see your opponent doing this or that.

Yeah, not sure either. Brood War never got "figured out" and constantly evolved/changed. New strategies were found and then countered.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Battle Realms was fun because it had great 3D graphics for the time, and also it had some of that complexity I was talking about earlier: you didn't just produce elite units, you had to combine simpler units into them, for example, 4 soldiers would be converted into a samurai, or 4 ronin would be converted into a necromancer. There were a lot of unique heroes too.

And in a game like Stronghold, you didn't just plop down a building, a wall would change based on what was next to it, and had to be connected to other wall segments or gates, building would look different next to a wall than out in space, other buildings had an effect on the area around.

Dwarf Fortress was so much fun because at one point you had to connect an actual water source to your farms to water them, or to build a well, you had to build an actual water reservoir (for bonus points, connect it to rain pools on the surface with a system of tunnels and gates to refill with rainwater periodically), and then you built a well structure above that, so it wasnt just some simple fixed building, it was deep and dynamic shit.

This is the kind of stuff RTS games need to fulfill their true potential. Not the silly APM shit that's putting me to sleep just reading it, or some story based campaign.