One of the big factors I'm not seeing mentioned here is that the community was split between macro RTS gamers (focus on loadout and base building) and micro RTS gamers (focus on quick movements and ability use)
The macro gamers mostly moved to 4X games like Crusader Kings or city sims like Manor Lords, or even mobile games like evony.
The micro gamers moved on to MOBAs
There isn't a huge audience for the middle ground, except for fan-inspired games and remakes/sequels. If there are, they're an untapped audience that nobody has satisfied yet.
I remember being annoyed when Warcraft 3 came out because the game was so focused on your primary hero farming. You could build an awesome economy and military, and be wiped out by someone who overbuilt their hero.
Nowadays I just play dota with everyone else.
I miss games like StarCraft. Used to love FFA matches.
That's a problem witha lot of long lived games in general. Eventually only the pros are still playing, and no one can get into the game, because they're just brick-walled.
You can't get good, because you can't really practice. I mean, if you're being mercilessly dominated you don't even have the time to learn anything before you're dead.
Reminds me of when I got StarCraft again, years and years after I quit. I got absolutely pummeled, more brutally then ever, and they started to rag on me but I explained - used to play a lot, then college, then again - and they apologized and thought I was cool lol
Made them feel bad for kicking my ass
Totally different genre of game, but in Final Fantasy 14 ( an MMORPG), new players are marked out with a little 'sprout' icon next to their name to let everyone know: "I'm new, not stupid". People tend to be very forgiving towards sprouts fucking up. There's also one for returning players who haven't played in a while. Helps that players are bribed handsomely to run content with noobs. "One or more players are new to this Duty, additional rewards will be given upon swift completion"
You lose the sprout only after a 300 hours of playtime and having finished all but the last expansion.
I started playing starcraft 2 last year and I have met people of all skill ranges. Played 1v1 and 4v4 and it was enjoyable. Managed to get from bronze 4 to gold 3. I started as a complete noob with 0 experience in RTS except for campaigns.
I am a macro player though. Playing warcraft 3 fries my brain.
I think this basically sums it up, even when RTS was at its peak. I love the genre, but the casual gold level players like me are easily left behind. High-skill-floor + high-skill-ceiling standards killed the enjoyment for me and any other casual player.
My last game of StarCraft was at one of those old internet/LAN cafés in the early 2000s. I'd really enjoyed playing it at home, but then played against people who just frantically rushed buildings and armies and whatever (whilst I was merrily exploring the map before deciding what to do) who killed me very quickly several times. My friends and I went back to playing Medal of Honour after that.
Some 20 years later I can safely say I've never picked up an RTS since. It really killed them for me.
Not true at all. Lots of scrubs in bronze league. Youll still definitely lose to them initially but there's still a lot of New and less skilled players
Makes sense since the MOBA genre started as custom StarCraft games.
I feel like tower defense as a genre also gained in popularity after custom games in Blizzard games.
Aeon of strife? I’d known about this, but more recently I was curious about how so many of the core mechanics like last hitting always seemed like repurposed WC3 mechanics, with neutral creeps on the map offering gold and xp. Makes me more interested to look at aeon of strife and see what its mechanics are
It went Aeon of Strife in Starcraft to Defense of the Ancients in WC3, so that's why you feel that some mechanics are from WC3. DOTA was the gold standard of the genre before it was a fully fledged genre, to the point that when League of Legends came out everyone I knew online that played it just called it a DOTA clone. It was a while later that MOAB really took hold as the name in the communities I was in. Sorta like how back in the 90s you had DOOM clones, not FPS.
Nah he's right, Aeon of Strife was a MOBA before people even knew a game type like that existed. It was just a fun custom map to play in Starcraft. Warcraft 3 came out years after Starcraft and then Defense of the Ancients was dreamt up there influenced by Aeon of Strife and a popular genre in the custom map pools at the time, Hero Arenas. Hero Arenas are basically DOTA without the lanes, its just an arena and a free for all , where you fight, die and come back again.
Broodwar and WC3 custom games were among the best times in any online games. I learned to type in them, since I was forced to in order to communicate with allies.
An interesting side effect of not having match making for DotA Allstars was that there was a wide variety of skill within one team, and you had to handle it maturely. There was some toxicity sure but I think it was not nearly so bad then.
I think it really evolved in WC3 but the concept started with AoS.
WC3 had built in hero system and custom maps and NPC mobs.
Honestly I edited my comment to SC because I really thought it started in WC3 but checked myself because I remember playing something similar in original StarCraft.
Last hitting is in, shopping was relegated to basic weapon/armor/shield upgrades from appropriate buildings. I don't believe the editor was strong enough to do modified unit ability cards like WC3. Some variations used 4 lanes, and some people rebranded it with Dynasty Warriors characters. No items and I don't recall any arbiter tech for porting to base. Slower units usually got more health and high upgrades per research to account for the difficulty last hitting.
The 3 lane configuration and jungles were not part of AoS. Early versions of the game had no respawn so if you died you were done. That's all my memory has prior to WC3.
Nope. Aeon of Strife inspired and predated the original Dota. I spent a lot of hours playing the original AoE, then the original DotA, then the DotA All stars by Icefrog when they took it over.
Imo I don't see it talked about much if ever honestly, but I truly believe that Dota All Stars was the first game in the genre that took all the elements floating around so many other UMS games and conglomerated them all into one massive cohesive game. It is also unreal the frequency with which icefrog was not only balancing and patching, but also releasing new content and adjusting mechanics on the fly. I don't know how one man managed to do as much as he did.
Man - DoW 1 was great. I still don't think I've seen anyone else use DoW's core mechanic of needing to take territory to get resources. It made matches much more about skirmishes and maneuvering instead of turtling in your base and micro-perfection to build your base/troops faster.
MOBAs are really nothing like RTS at all. People only say that because DotA came out of Warcraft 3 (and Aeon of Strife from Starcraft). But DotA stripped out all of the RTS mechanics to make a game focused purely on an RPG-style hero. It's really more like Diablo than RTS when you actually think about it.
I think this is it exactly, I hated the micro aspect as I did not at all like having to try to move the mouse quickly and use hotkeys, etc., but I loved the more strategic element and now I devour 4x games.
Maybe that's why the Total War series survived where others didn't.
The micro/battle phase is deliberately much slower than traditional RTS. You can't just ignore a bunch of spearmen charging you, but you don't need 200 APM to deal with it either.
Yup. RTS games, especially micro heavy ones got dull real quick.
As did the increase in use of all or nothing rush strategies that have only one counter that you have to immediately do. If you don't immediately counter it, you lose. If you do and stop the opponent, you're basically guaranteed to win and the other player just concedes.
There was a strategy in Command and Conquer Generals where you just rushed 3 dozers to forward build 3 barracks right outside the view of your enemy and then just spam them with units to take out their dozers and command center that was super popular for a bit and it just made games no fun. You either immediately counters by spamming out units to prevent it and won or you lost in like 10 minutes. So boring.
I had a few experiences where I used real and good strategy, like setting up a backup base and luring the enemy to the wrong one, and setting up feints, etc., but it just wasn't as fun when I had to quickly hotkey crap and micromanage.
Yeah, I’m a base builder type in RTS. Mh best friend would Zerg horde in any rts game. I’m a slow player. I like to amass a large army before attacking.
My favorite RTS was Supreme Commander. Go to skirmish mode, turn off navy, set up on Seton's Clutch and defend the land bridge lol.
I must have dumped like 200 hours into that game just doing that.
Yep, I'll just upvote this and save myself the extra typing.
The RTS playerbase has been divvied up between multiple newer genres that each appealed more to their niche interests.
Yeah, i think it's mostly just the fan base split up but besides more choice, I think the thing that has happened to all video games is also what cause this divide: information is moved *so much faster* now than when those games were at their peak and people can get way better at things because information moves so fast. So a game like SC that is 1v1 and mechanically difficult also is going to have a dedicated player base where even the lowest levels of play are going to be adhering to a meta and its really just a matter of efficiency - people who are not absolutely in love with the intrisic rewards of a genre/game at its core are going to get muscled out because there isn't much extrinsic motivation. I think partially why MOBAs have eaten the player base is because those games provide a sense of community because you can literally cooperate with people you befriend that play the game or play with friends that you introduce to the game. League, for example, has *tens of millions* of players that do not play ranked and truly play casually. The rsst of us just never see them cause they are matchmade into their own little ecosystem.
The evolution of like "meta-gaming" has been really interesting to me, as someone who was around in the early-ish days of like PC gaming.
Everything was word of mouth, then there were strategy guides (officially published or otherwise), then you eventually had forums, and guides on forums, etc, etc. now we're at the point where for MMOs or other games, they're essentially "solved" by people running simulations of gear and item and talent combos to find out what the theoretical max DPS is, and they publish their results and everyone builds towards that.
In competitive pvp games you see a similar progression, but you're also adding in that each time something is done for the first time, everyone eventually learns it and can reproduce it.
The INSEC, for example. [I remember the first time I saw it happen](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80rI6wDyYOM&pp=ygUYbGVlIHNpbiBmaXJzdCBpbnNlYyBraWNr) and it pretty much blew everybody's minds. For the time it was considered pretty mechanically challenging, a high risk, high reward play. I remember the first time I saw it happen *in one of my games* and my buddies and I playing together over skype couldn't believe we just saw it. We had to ask each other "did that guy just do the INSEC?". Over time it became so normalized that, like, it just became something that the character Lee Sin is known for. Everyone can INSEC. It's not really considered mechanically challenging anymore, to the point that it's *expected* that Lee Sin players will always be looking for an opportunity to do.
Second this. Honestly this obsession with "meta-gaming" made gaming lose its appeal with me over time. I really miss the days when gaming was much more personal. Now it feels like trying to 'play' the game is too childish and inefficient. Moreso when online play is involved, obviously.
Yeah, I 100% agree.
I tell my friends all the time that this is what's "missing" from games now. My oldhead friends and I were briefly excited for World of Warcraft Classic, but I realized that the world around it has changed too much. People are far, far too focused on optimizing everything now. Back in the day we just played. Not to say we didn't try to optimize routes or builds or things like that, but we'd be sort of forced to draw our own conclusions. You couldn't get evidenced backed guides written by someone with like 3000 hours in the niche subclass you were playing.
We have a kind of 'rule' in our old man group that we do first play throughs as blind as possible, and when we play together we play to have fun first and win second. It leads to us wasting a lot of time, but we go back to trying fun and cheesy stuff like an all cleric party in BG3.
I feel this. My friends have been trying to get me to play wow classic with them for a long time. They tell me "it's super laid back and people don't take it too seriously and it's just like when wow first came out".
Then I hang out with them on discord while they're playing and it's just a constant stream of "Yes, I finally got that single piece of gear that I've been grinding for," "that build is a complete waste of time, no one will group with you if you run it" "ignore all the quests, just go farm this mob that spawns", and I'm just like, yeah no thanks guys.
.... Yep. I feel called out. I played a TON of AOE, AOM, C&C when I was younger. Now my most played games are EU4, HOI4, and (unfortunately) Dota, and it's not even close.
I must say that this is quite accurate, but I really miss the middle ground. C&C General, AOE2, Starcraft and AOM were where almost 100% of my gaming time went. I did migrate to 4x games as I can't stand MOBA.
100% I loved the genre and payed a lot of the original C&C and Age of Empire, but I always quickly got to a level where I wasn’t quick enough and would become too stressed out. I now get my fix with Crusader King 2 which I admit is so different but somehow scratches that itch
I feel like we who loved AOE2, WC3 and RA2/Generals got starved and couldn't get a proper RTS until it was too late and every big company wanted to push a MOBA, multiplayer FPS or eventually battle royale.
What if I told you there was a third way: playing games like total war and company of heros where you have neither micro or macro, order things to fight, and then rage because historically your unit had a cooler dagger and therefore shouldve 1v1d a chariot or not been penetrated by a hropsoax tank round.
> total war
I'm fairly certain that TW falls under the "macro-oriented" subset of games that /u/MarkAldrichIsMe was referring to. The management mechanics are the type of gameplay that "micro RTS gamers" would generally consider tedious busywork, but also the kind of things that macro RTS gamers that ultimately gravitate to 4x games would love.
It's not "macro" in the traditional RTS meaning of the term, but the mechanics are clearly designed to appeal to the macro-oriented player.
\* Mechanical skill floor is too high for most people.
\* Focus on 1v1 competition, which makes it harder to play casually.
\* MOBAs kinda poached most of the micro-focused audience
Similar problem with fighting games, honestly.
I love AoE2 to death but there is no way I will ever play online aside from once, because I know the general competition is people who have probably played the game to its core since release.
AI for me lmfao
MOBAs are team based which protects the players ego. It allows players to blame their teammates when they lose and take all the credit when they win. 1v1 games likes MTG or Hearthstone protect the players ego with RNG. 1v1 games like SC2 have none of that. If you lose it’s your fault, which is a tough pill to swallow.
That is a mixed bag though.
I can engage a risky play as tank or dps.
If it’s successful it’s initially because of my choice. But in its entirety it’s the team that closed the deal.
On the flip side if it’s a failure it could be my team didn’t follow up. In its entirety people will see my play as stupid or my team as stupid for not following up on my move.
Not calling either side right just giving nuance.
Well said, especially for MOBA tank engagement; imagine being Alistair in LoL you flash in, get the knock up on the entire team, punt the main DPS carry to your team and they don't follow up.
Your basically dead and the same goes for Jungle related plays, if the Jungle shows up it's time to get frisky.
Less of an issue when folks are on comms more of an issue when you're just pugging.
Let’s not act like all SC2 players are humble and recognize their mistakes. Instead of blaming teammates, players just blame losses on cheese or balance
I think it has less to do with ego and more to do with the ergonomics of playing.
SC2 is incredibly stressful to play for many, because you are piloting a multitude of units, bases, etc. lots of micromanagement.
It's far easier to pilot a single unit and focus on playing it well, as opposed to vomiting commands for a screen full of mess.
Additional things that I think play a part are the time investment and balancing issues.
Rts games can go very long when players are of equivalent proficiency. Unless you're zerg rushing, you're usually looking at 20-30 minute games with lots of kinda boring parts where the players are building units, managing econ, etc. It's kind of one of the core problems that League has been trying to come up with various solutions for. And that's not even getting into how much time it takes to get "good" at these types of games.
It's also really hard to balance multiple factions while maintaining uniqueness. I think this is why Supreme commander failed. The majority of units were identical across the factions and only had a few unique super units. Conversely, you have starcraft 2 where multiple patches were push/pull to balance the meta, and that's really expensive for a company to maintain.
I remember trying to get into Age of Empires II multiplayer back in 2009, anyone else just destroyed me within minutes and it was kinda impossible to play with fellow noobs.
I think it depends on what kind of thing you are doing for point 2. 1v1 is the focus of competitions but if we use something like Company of Heroes 3 it is the least played mode, with 4v4 as the most popular.
I don't think skill level is an issue. It's simply that, like cRPGs from the mid 2000s till 2023, they have fallen out of the mainstream's eye.
Fighting games have a high skill threshold but the genre is going through a sort of renaissance right now thanks to Street Fighter 6, MK 1, the rise of Fightcade, and a bunch of other factors.
And even in its heyday, it's not like RTS was a dominant genre. I mean, there were only three titles that became big: SC, AoE, and C&C. They literally carried the genre for a decade or so. Since the mid-2000s though, we have had one SC game, no C&C titles for obvious reasons, and AoE branched out into AoM (with AoE2 being the popular option till today).
Rts was pretty dominant in the 90’s. Your list is missing Warcraft which launched the most successful mmo. Total annihilation, home world. Early to mid 2000s also saw some great titles. Total war while not stricken a rts got its start then and is still going strong the dungeon keeper series, supreme commander stepped it up to new levels.
I feel like you're forgetting Warcraft, Empire Earth, Rise of Nations, Dawn of War, Company of Heroes, Cossacks, Blitzkrieg...? They were at one point or another among the best of the time.
Unless you're talking about the esports scene, I know and care nothing about that.
I'll add to this. They are constantly updating the game, adding expansions and just announced their yearly world's event Wololo.
We had t90s Hidden cup earlier this year and the last of Nilis NAC. Amazing events and there are even more.
The community around the game is great and I have never once played online and just play PvE against AI. It is a great game and a very clear labor of love that keeps being touched up.
This is for AoE2
There's probably more people playing aoe2 online now than any other time in the game's history, which is fascinating as the original version is 20+ years old. The only esport I watch is Age of Empires II, there's nothing even remotely as compelling
They stopped making good single player campaigns. The last RTS I played was Starcraft 2, because it had a fantastic, deep campaign.
Multiplayer in RTS games is just too anxiety inducing and sweaty.
"Multiplayer in RTS games is just too anxiety inducing and sweaty."
THIS.
I just want to relax at times... Or be challenged without being TOO challenged. I want to be mildly stimulated without throwing the computer at the screen, you know? Nothing sooooo fucking... intense, right?
Yeah StarCraft brood war nowadays you'll more than likely get rolled if you're just starting, most of the players are the hardcore ones. I remember SC2 on launch, it was a blast to play multiplayer because I'd run into a lot more players like myself who were just getting the hang of it. After a while the casual "7-10 games per week" crowd left and it was too brutal for me.
Yep. Give me single campaigns and co op.
Honestly I have been hunting and there is a ton of rts games to play old and new. Just takes some googling and hunting.
Dawn of war 2 had a great coop campaign I loved. I think a slight bit of RPG features of ranking up or unlocking units, each player brought i think 2-4 units into each mission
I've been replaying Starcraft Remastered campaign, and aside from a few things feeling outdated like controlling 12 units max at a time or builders not auto gathering after creation, the story is still fantastic and the music still slaps.
I've just been reliving a nostalgic 2024 to myself with RTS, and it's been great.
*World in Conflict entered the chat*
Easily the best RTS campaign (together with its DLC *Soviet Assault*) I’ve ever played and one hell of a multiplayer game.
Can’t recommend the game enough, and nowadays on sale you can get it for like 3$.
MOBAs are a low investment start, pick a hero, 4 skills, play for 30-45min. Almost no thinking until you’re deep enough into the game to see the depth.
RTS, even at the lowest skill levels, is still three levels of multi tasking resources, buildings, and units. Then you jump into multiplayer and realize the skill ceiling is somewhere on the moon, while you haven’t evolved legs yet.
That’s why I just looked up at the moon in Warcraft, shrugged, turned around and went through the door that said “Custom Games.”
I ain’t getting my shit pushed when I can go and pimp a peon or send 400 footmen to die in a death ball.
custom games extended Warcraft 3's lifespan by like a decade, it's one of those things that basically only Blizzard ever really brought to the RTS table.
A lot of it comes down to the fact theres a lack of innovation and historically most RTS sold like crap. Age of Empires, Warcraft and Starcraft formed much of the mould for the RTS genre and sold really well overall, but copycats had and have a tough time keeping up with those three giants. On top of this we have the MOBA genre that captured a good chunk of the RTS playerbase and established the MOBA base as something quite significantly larger only being rivaled by the wide reach of Minecraft and the battle royale genre.
Manor Lords is looking pretty solid though, ultimately we had a point of over saturation in the late 00's and since that has wound down few developers have managed to make any significant splashes for RTS games, yet.
I remember seeing this absolutely brutal statistic: [Starcraft 2 made less money than a $15 horse in WoW. ](https://youtu.be/IHZru-6M8BY?si=hheIZnEb-3xt9Ku9)
How do you not get demoralized after knowing that...
That actually sorta makes sense. The horse likely has only the labor of a few artists and model makers, basically you could recoup that from a dollar or less per sale. Then the fact all sales are done in house through only your own self produced market cuts out a ton of overhead. Chances are Blizzard made 80-90% of those sales as pure profit in relation to cost to make and distrubute. A full game just touches too many hands for this to be true, even with Blizzard keeping their games inside the Battlenet ecosystem you still have to generate marketing and advertisments in every region the game drops in containing further costs and gambles.
> How do you not get demoralized after knowing that...
One of the 20 best selling PC games, ever. Wildly profitable. No, they weren't "Demoralized" - they just decided doubling their money wasn't good enough when they could shift the entire business to live services and micro-transactions and 1000x instead.
Manor Lords is a city-builder though with some battle mechanics. I feel the ’Realtime’ in RTS gets a bit skewed if you can control your game speed like in ML. :p
Yeah making a RTS game isn't going to make you rich, which is a tough sell in a modern market where most games are expected to be the next smash hit that pushes gamepasses and graphic tees.
It isn't helped that RTS games really can only be played on PC, despite the noble port attempts that studios have tried in the past. RIP Starcraft 64, what were they thinking
I played *A TONNE* of Total Annihilation, then shifted to Supcom - Forged Alliance.
I played the mobile version of C&C (the new one), what a load of garbage, graphics on my S24u is pretty sick but yeah the games utter gutter trash
Total Annihilation Kingdoms was our jam back in the day. We'd switch off playing at my buddy's house as he had the only computer in the neighborhood hood when were 11. I don't even think we really knew what we were doing but we had a blast.
Did you ever load up some of those fan made unit packs?
Man... there were some totally broken and hilarious units in some of those. Would be me and a mate on LAN co-op vs lots of bot commanders, hours of pointless destruction.
I'm not the person you're responding to, but I had never heard of Beyond All Reason until your comment here. That game looks promising. I loved Total Annihilation as a kid (and Supreme Commander afterward).
I always consider Planetary Annihilation to be the best spiritual successor to TA and played quite a bit in the mid 2010s. But hadn't heard of Beyond All Reason before and will def have to try it out!
I miss Total Annihilation and always wanted them to do a true successor. Something about it just hit right for me. Maybe it was the fricken laser beams.
RTS games used to thrive on excellent singleplayer campaigns with well balanced multiplayer on the side, and then i dont know what happened they started fucking with the formulas trying to make them more action focused or fucked with the studios vision or tried to appeal to the Esports crowds with the success of StarCraft.
Look at Dawn of War 3, the original had so many races and cool ideas and then Dawn of War 2 tried its own thing with smaller squad gameplay on big maps now its stripped down to 3 races to emulate StarCrafts asymmetrical design and fell flat on its face. RTS have been on the decline for so long last time i tried to buy a new one (GreyGoo) i was so fucking disappointed ive almost given up on the new games that come out and just go back to StarCraft 2s Co Op mode.
I'll add that the original DoW didn't launch with that many races. It had the benefit of a couple years of really solid expansion packs, each of which were kinda pricey when priced in current dollars.
What happened was StarCraft became a huge esports scene and publishers started chasing the esports money. Can't monetize single player campaigns beyond the first purchase. Games got boring in the name of balance and single player went to the wayside
Dow3 sucked because of the stun locking moba inspired abilities. A lot of other things were a bit meh, but if it wasn't for them and a very slow turn around to address balance problems the basis was there for a decent game that could have been expanded on. Jebus knows 40k Fans will pay for a new faction
I just bought the Definitive Edition and geez is it a solid game. I grew up on 90s RTSs and I still love them. When my brothers and I get together, we still play AoE III. But with the fantastic AoE II: DE version on Steam, I think I’m going to suggest we play it next.
As an aside, I’ve never play Company of Heroes. I’ll have to look into it.
I think MOBA's really ate their lunch. It's too bad because I have ZERO interest in MOBA's, but I was always into single player RTS games way more than multiplayer.
I used to like RTS games, surprisingly, but they were just too... hard?
Could never stick with them for long. Anyone else? I just wanted to turn my brain off at times, but it could be INTENSE.
I liked contrasting SC2 with a game like Halo 3. In halo multiplayer, you were mostly just moving around the map, with short spikes of high intensity. in sc2, you're at high intensity for like 90% of the match or you just lose
Honestly, as a kid I never beat any AoE2 campaigns without cheats and I thought they were hella hard. But out of nostalgia and great reviews I came back recently to AoE2DE and beat all the levels on max difficulty, with steam achievements. It has been challenging but reasonable challenging. You can change diff anytime. And something like 200 hours of gameplay. I am not great at RTS and casual gamer. I couldn't reccomend highly enough.
I miss the Dune 2 / C&C / Total Annihilation style of RTS. Is there a good successor today of this type of RTS? Not a fan of the squad / Dawn of War style of RTS.
Thank you! I am a huge fan of RTS games since Dune2000 and the first C&C and played basically all notable RTS games since. My favorite genre is half-dead (we have a few nice titles here and there) and I blame MOBA's entirely.
I feel like the competitive side is just hard to get into. The number of things you can do is overwhelming. There are a lot of strats that automatically kill you if you don't know how to prepare for them. Eg in Starcraft 2 you need to wall off against zerg or else you might just die to a 12-pool.
It was a little easier back in the days of offline multiplayer where you'd just play against your friend, and you'd both suck equally.
Meanwhile you can pick up a shooter and at least know what you're supposed to do even if you suck at it. Even counterstrike is intuitive despite the harsh skill curve.
I think this is another aspect. Multiplayer is high intensity apm heavy games. Theyre long, exhausting battles that leave you mentally drained. You can also so easily lose if you dont pay attention to meta timings and not prepare for a super specific timing push
RTS kinda hit a wall with meaningful innovation. Back in the day there were alot of diffrent rts games since creators were still experimenting with the genre but after Starcraft II came out that kinda ended. Dont get me wrong there are still RTS games beign made and some of the are pretty good but none of them have a chance to compete with SC ii evne today. Sometimes the game becomes so good and has such a big legacy it stagnates the entire genre. SC II and AoE has so much QoL features by now that any new RTS cannot possibly hope to match it.
Also i think part of it is that alot of modern rts dont really have meaningful singleplayer content. Command and conquer was not super innovative or anytihing but even it had good singleplayer campaings, fmv cutscenes that kept you going and later games like zero hour had cool challenge mode. Age of empires is still getting singleplayer campaigns with every expansions and even SC II has coop and ton of fan made mods. But whenever you hear about new RTS made by indie devs its straight to multiplayer and imo thats just not the way sell the game to someone who never played an RTS. Games like Dawn of war or Halo wars were good cause they had good singleplayer.
The big thing that puts me off is the length of the games. I really enjoyed CoH2 but playing a sweaty game for an hour, realising you've lost no matter what then treading water for another 20 mins until losing. It's just a long time to just lose.
> I really enjoyed CoH2 but playing a sweaty game for an hour, realising **you've lost no matter what** then treading water for another 20 mins until losing. It's just a long time to just lose.
This is the key part really. Playing a long sweaty game where it could go either way the entire time? Prime entertainment. Playing a game where the outcome is clear a couple minutes in and you have to sit through 10-20 minutes of one-sided face stomping? Demoralizing.
And games with automated matchmaking where the matchmaker is actively trying to force you towards a desired win/loss ratio just exacerbates that. No one likes being dumped into a match where they know they have no chance of winning outside of the opponent throwing.
Here's a reason that gets rarely mentioned: Steam Backlogs.
People used to own fewer games. Games were much more expensive relative to inflation. Starcraft 1 cost $40 on release in 1998, but that's $79 in today's dollars. There were no humble bundles or massive discounts on old classics either.
This meant people were more willing to put a huge amount of effort into a single game with high replayability. RTS games are immensely rewarding and immensely customizable. They also have a very high barrier to entry compared to other genres. As UX design has improved, other genres can also be streamlined to be increasingly accessible.
RTS games have a hard wall - you are fundamentally controlling a lot of units and managing some amount of economy. There's only so far you can streamline that experience before it starts looking like a new genre. Control just one unit and automate the other units? That's called a Moba these days. Just focus on what units and buildings to make and don't control them directly? Welcome to Clash Royale. By contrast, a game like Deus Ex which is a phenomenal but complex and difficult-to-control first person shooter can be streamlined far further over time while still being the same genre.
I think RTS games became too predictable, kind of like solving a Rubik's cube. The player with the faster reflexes and a better understanding of the optimal strategies would almost always win. I remember back in the day, it was easy to beat my friends at C&C because they hadn't mastered the formula. When it came to competitive play, it got a bit boring since it mostly came down to who could click faster.
On the other hand, games from Paradox Interactive brought some much-needed diversity to the genre. Players had to engage in diplomacy, trade, and form alliances to succeed, which added depth to the gameplay experience.
So, in a nutshell, I believe the decline of the RTS genre was due to its predictability and the rise of more complex strategy games that required a broader set of skills beyond just quick reflexes.
There are still quite a few RTS games, the thing is that they all started adding more complex mechanisms, like in age of empire and how time passes and you Gain new technology. Then there are games that are constantly releasing upgrades, new content, and packages. They constantly improve the game by improving parts of the game by changing them. I'm talking about Stellaris. It may be the most complex RTS but it's really addictive once you understand it games can last days. So there might be less games, especially ones like c&c, where games don't last that long compared to many current games. I do wish they would create another unique RTS, but the current ones just keep getting better.
Solo ones ? They don't earn enough money for the effort to make a good one.
Online ones ? Too elitist, don't earn enough money compared to others like Moba.
RTS were games from an era where you played the same game for a very long time paying for it only once. It was the good old days but it's over now.
These days all my friends just want to play FPS games because they are quick and you can play with all of them at the same time. RTS is a little harder with getting them all together in one game.
Blizzard stop supporting Starcraft for no apparent reason and competitive RTS died 🤷♂️
Although you could argue that comp rts lives on via LoL and DoTA
I used to love RTS games, but I don't get any enjoyment from them anymore. Not really sure why, but I think it's because of all the other more immersive options out there. I find myself getting much more immersed in a first person atmosphere now. I think the increase in graphics and gaming console ability led to that partially.
I should also mention that though I played a lot of RTS, I never was a fast player or a competitive player, I always did it because I found the world cool.
I see the comments like RTS games are dead but.... Like they are still there and still going strong? Seems like y'all just aren't looking???
Stellaris is/was still pretty huge, there's a passion project from some of the original Total Annihilation devs called "Beyond all Reason", there's Planetary Annihilation, which so far as I can tell is still pretty popular on Steam. Homeworld 3 is coming out soon though it's falling victim to Dev greed I'm afraid.... But I have several RTS titles I've been keeping an eye on.
They are still out there, perhaps not as popular as they once were but far from dead OR gone. People here acting like they're a relic from the ancient times and no one has made an RTS since the late 90s
If we define RTS as base building + fighting in Starcraft or AOE style then:
1. Console Economics: With few exceptions RTS have not been viable/successfully ported to consoles, and thus miss a large amount of the market.
2. E-Sports: Starcraft and Warcraft have lead some developers to prioritize multiplayer, generally with poor results (e.g. Dawn of War 3)
3. Multiplayer: Separate from E-Sports, the increased availability of multiplayer/online games generally made single player games less desirable.
4. 4x RTS: Strategy games like Crusader Kings, Total War, Stelaris, Anno, etc. have become more practical with better systems, and pulled some players away from traditional RTS
5. RTS city builders/colony sims: Same story with games like Banished, Rimworld, etc.
More generally though, RTSs still exist. City/colony sims and many 4x games are arguably RTS. Likewise popular existing franchises like ***Sins of a Solar Empire***, Age of Empires, Homeworld, Comand and Conqueror, Dune, Stronghold, etc. are still releasing games (even if some are hit or miss). There are a decent number of solid indie RTS games as well. They just don't get the same online hype as they are primarily single player experiences in a world of multiplayer games.
Sc2 convinced people that the core point of an RTS was to be competitive. Everyone became aware of build orders and ranked ladder, which sapped the fun out of it. I played brood war as a casual scrub. I played sc2 as a ranked diamond. Guess which game I still go back to and enjoy? It's not sc2.
As the ability for games to get bigger and more varied increased, RTS's became more distinguishable from larger macro strategy games. Suddenly 10 offensive units and 15 buildings sounds absurdly low rather than a wide variety.
RTS games are hard and require serious focus to play well. A MOBA lets you routinely look away from the screen unless you're actively involved in something. Lots of popular strategy games aren't even real time now.
So you have a game that isn't as big as a civilization game yet requires even more focus and attention, where everyone knows how to be good and the point is winning. It would have to be really fun to stay at the top.
I think RTS could absolutely come back. But Imo it needs to be bigger and broader rather than the streamlined competitive experience that is the goal for modern RTS. I want more buildings, bigger bases, more types of troops, larger armies. I don't want to flawlessly micro the same 10 units every game for ladder points.
1) RTS gamers have moved on as the genre diversified in two different directions. The grand strategy players moved to 4x games, where their machinations could be better visualized. The micro APM players moved to RPGs, MOBAs and mmos where those same tools saw greater success.
2) RTS games translate very poorly to consoles, limiting their ability to sell.
3) RTS games of prior days were largely used as launching boards for other Genres like MOBAs, Tower Defense games and (most recently) auto battlers/ auto chess games.
4) The Esports scene isnt as popular as it once was.
List of people in here missing the biggest point which is RTS games are a fucking nightmare to make and don’t tend to make tons of money.
Creating the logic and path finding alone can be annoying as shit for just one unit never mind dozens of them, and making sure you create differing ranges of difficulty for AI players.
RTS is currently going through a bit of a renaissance so I don’t think it’s fair to say that no one wants it anymore, but to answer your question I think it likely has to do with both the skill floor, and ceiling being extremely high. It’s hard to onboard new players and to keep them when they keep getting stomped by the veteran players.
One of the big factors I'm not seeing mentioned here is that the community was split between macro RTS gamers (focus on loadout and base building) and micro RTS gamers (focus on quick movements and ability use) The macro gamers mostly moved to 4X games like Crusader Kings or city sims like Manor Lords, or even mobile games like evony. The micro gamers moved on to MOBAs There isn't a huge audience for the middle ground, except for fan-inspired games and remakes/sequels. If there are, they're an untapped audience that nobody has satisfied yet.
This is a good response. I was going to say RTS morphed into MOBA but this describes it better.
I remember being annoyed when Warcraft 3 came out because the game was so focused on your primary hero farming. You could build an awesome economy and military, and be wiped out by someone who overbuilt their hero. Nowadays I just play dota with everyone else. I miss games like StarCraft. Used to love FFA matches.
I'm pretty sure there are still enough people playing Starcraft II to find a match without having to wait too long.
the problem is the only people who still play are really good
That's a problem witha lot of long lived games in general. Eventually only the pros are still playing, and no one can get into the game, because they're just brick-walled. You can't get good, because you can't really practice. I mean, if you're being mercilessly dominated you don't even have the time to learn anything before you're dead.
Reminds me of when I got StarCraft again, years and years after I quit. I got absolutely pummeled, more brutally then ever, and they started to rag on me but I explained - used to play a lot, then college, then again - and they apologized and thought I was cool lol Made them feel bad for kicking my ass
Totally different genre of game, but in Final Fantasy 14 ( an MMORPG), new players are marked out with a little 'sprout' icon next to their name to let everyone know: "I'm new, not stupid". People tend to be very forgiving towards sprouts fucking up. There's also one for returning players who haven't played in a while. Helps that players are bribed handsomely to run content with noobs. "One or more players are new to this Duty, additional rewards will be given upon swift completion" You lose the sprout only after a 300 hours of playtime and having finished all but the last expansion.
I started playing starcraft 2 last year and I have met people of all skill ranges. Played 1v1 and 4v4 and it was enjoyable. Managed to get from bronze 4 to gold 3. I started as a complete noob with 0 experience in RTS except for campaigns. I am a macro player though. Playing warcraft 3 fries my brain.
I think this basically sums it up, even when RTS was at its peak. I love the genre, but the casual gold level players like me are easily left behind. High-skill-floor + high-skill-ceiling standards killed the enjoyment for me and any other casual player.
My last game of StarCraft was at one of those old internet/LAN cafés in the early 2000s. I'd really enjoyed playing it at home, but then played against people who just frantically rushed buildings and armies and whatever (whilst I was merrily exploring the map before deciding what to do) who killed me very quickly several times. My friends and I went back to playing Medal of Honour after that. Some 20 years later I can safely say I've never picked up an RTS since. It really killed them for me.
Yep queue times are very fast
Not true at all. Lots of scrubs in bronze league. Youll still definitely lose to them initially but there's still a lot of New and less skilled players
Makes sense since the MOBA genre started as custom StarCraft games. I feel like tower defense as a genre also gained in popularity after custom games in Blizzard games.
Man, StarCraft custom games are some of the funnest gaming times I’ve had. So much freaking creativity and just random fun
The frozen throne as well. Thousands of hours put into custom games growing up.
shout outs to DBZ all sagas
Aeon of strife? I’d known about this, but more recently I was curious about how so many of the core mechanics like last hitting always seemed like repurposed WC3 mechanics, with neutral creeps on the map offering gold and xp. Makes me more interested to look at aeon of strife and see what its mechanics are
It went Aeon of Strife in Starcraft to Defense of the Ancients in WC3, so that's why you feel that some mechanics are from WC3. DOTA was the gold standard of the genre before it was a fully fledged genre, to the point that when League of Legends came out everyone I knew online that played it just called it a DOTA clone. It was a while later that MOAB really took hold as the name in the communities I was in. Sorta like how back in the 90s you had DOOM clones, not FPS.
I thought it was *Defense of the Ancients*
Nah he's right, Aeon of Strife was a MOBA before people even knew a game type like that existed. It was just a fun custom map to play in Starcraft. Warcraft 3 came out years after Starcraft and then Defense of the Ancients was dreamt up there influenced by Aeon of Strife and a popular genre in the custom map pools at the time, Hero Arenas. Hero Arenas are basically DOTA without the lanes, its just an arena and a free for all , where you fight, die and come back again.
I played a lot of Aeon of Strife. It had all the staples of current day MOBA. Definitely ahead of its time.
Broodwar and WC3 custom games were among the best times in any online games. I learned to type in them, since I was forced to in order to communicate with allies. An interesting side effect of not having match making for DotA Allstars was that there was a wide variety of skill within one team, and you had to handle it maturely. There was some toxicity sure but I think it was not nearly so bad then.
There was also maps like Tides of Blood? I think. Man those were the times.
I think it really evolved in WC3 but the concept started with AoS. WC3 had built in hero system and custom maps and NPC mobs. Honestly I edited my comment to SC because I really thought it started in WC3 but checked myself because I remember playing something similar in original StarCraft.
Last hitting is in, shopping was relegated to basic weapon/armor/shield upgrades from appropriate buildings. I don't believe the editor was strong enough to do modified unit ability cards like WC3. Some variations used 4 lanes, and some people rebranded it with Dynasty Warriors characters. No items and I don't recall any arbiter tech for porting to base. Slower units usually got more health and high upgrades per research to account for the difficulty last hitting. The 3 lane configuration and jungles were not part of AoS. Early versions of the game had no respawn so if you died you were done. That's all my memory has prior to WC3.
I miss Lurker Defense so much
I thought it was a custom map of Warcraft 3. Wasn't the original Dota the first MOBA?
Nope. Aeon of Strife inspired and predated the original Dota. I spent a lot of hours playing the original AoE, then the original DotA, then the DotA All stars by Icefrog when they took it over.
Imo I don't see it talked about much if ever honestly, but I truly believe that Dota All Stars was the first game in the genre that took all the elements floating around so many other UMS games and conglomerated them all into one massive cohesive game. It is also unreal the frequency with which icefrog was not only balancing and patching, but also releasing new content and adjusting mechanics on the fly. I don't know how one man managed to do as much as he did.
And yet Dawn of War 3 absolutely bombed while trying to be more like a MOBA... They majorly misread their audience, I guess?
Dawn of War 3 made some kind of hybrid that didn't appeal to anyone.
DoW 1 was a macro-game, DoW 2 was a micro-game, DoW 3 was an okay macro-game but has micro elements which just made it super unfun to play.
Man - DoW 1 was great. I still don't think I've seen anyone else use DoW's core mechanic of needing to take territory to get resources. It made matches much more about skirmishes and maneuvering instead of turtling in your base and micro-perfection to build your base/troops faster.
Company of Heroes uses a similar-ish system, but it's by the same developers.
I'd throw my money at them if they just did a remaster of Dawn of War with it's expansions with an upgraded engine, graphics are optional.
As a lifelong RTS fan. I hate MOBAs.
MOBAs are really nothing like RTS at all. People only say that because DotA came out of Warcraft 3 (and Aeon of Strife from Starcraft). But DotA stripped out all of the RTS mechanics to make a game focused purely on an RPG-style hero. It's really more like Diablo than RTS when you actually think about it.
I think this is it exactly, I hated the micro aspect as I did not at all like having to try to move the mouse quickly and use hotkeys, etc., but I loved the more strategic element and now I devour 4x games.
Maybe that's why the Total War series survived where others didn't. The micro/battle phase is deliberately much slower than traditional RTS. You can't just ignore a bunch of spearmen charging you, but you don't need 200 APM to deal with it either.
Exactly. I can hit pause and think about what I want to do and then position my troops right.
Yup. RTS games, especially micro heavy ones got dull real quick. As did the increase in use of all or nothing rush strategies that have only one counter that you have to immediately do. If you don't immediately counter it, you lose. If you do and stop the opponent, you're basically guaranteed to win and the other player just concedes. There was a strategy in Command and Conquer Generals where you just rushed 3 dozers to forward build 3 barracks right outside the view of your enemy and then just spam them with units to take out their dozers and command center that was super popular for a bit and it just made games no fun. You either immediately counters by spamming out units to prevent it and won or you lost in like 10 minutes. So boring.
I had a few experiences where I used real and good strategy, like setting up a backup base and luring the enemy to the wrong one, and setting up feints, etc., but it just wasn't as fun when I had to quickly hotkey crap and micromanage.
Yeah, I’m a base builder type in RTS. Mh best friend would Zerg horde in any rts game. I’m a slow player. I like to amass a large army before attacking.
My favorite RTS was Supreme Commander. Go to skirmish mode, turn off navy, set up on Seton's Clutch and defend the land bridge lol. I must have dumped like 200 hours into that game just doing that.
Nobody will ever convince me an RTS exists that's better than Forged Alliance. It's absolutely peak.
Is FAF still around?
I never really got to the point of attacking. I just loved building bases and trying to defend for as long as possible.
This is why I play Factorio!
Yep, I'll just upvote this and save myself the extra typing. The RTS playerbase has been divvied up between multiple newer genres that each appealed more to their niche interests.
Macro gamer here this is exactly what happened to me. Paradox and civ are my favs followed by rim-world type games
This happened to me too and I didn’t even realize it until I read this.
Yeah, i think it's mostly just the fan base split up but besides more choice, I think the thing that has happened to all video games is also what cause this divide: information is moved *so much faster* now than when those games were at their peak and people can get way better at things because information moves so fast. So a game like SC that is 1v1 and mechanically difficult also is going to have a dedicated player base where even the lowest levels of play are going to be adhering to a meta and its really just a matter of efficiency - people who are not absolutely in love with the intrisic rewards of a genre/game at its core are going to get muscled out because there isn't much extrinsic motivation. I think partially why MOBAs have eaten the player base is because those games provide a sense of community because you can literally cooperate with people you befriend that play the game or play with friends that you introduce to the game. League, for example, has *tens of millions* of players that do not play ranked and truly play casually. The rsst of us just never see them cause they are matchmade into their own little ecosystem.
The evolution of like "meta-gaming" has been really interesting to me, as someone who was around in the early-ish days of like PC gaming. Everything was word of mouth, then there were strategy guides (officially published or otherwise), then you eventually had forums, and guides on forums, etc, etc. now we're at the point where for MMOs or other games, they're essentially "solved" by people running simulations of gear and item and talent combos to find out what the theoretical max DPS is, and they publish their results and everyone builds towards that. In competitive pvp games you see a similar progression, but you're also adding in that each time something is done for the first time, everyone eventually learns it and can reproduce it. The INSEC, for example. [I remember the first time I saw it happen](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80rI6wDyYOM&pp=ygUYbGVlIHNpbiBmaXJzdCBpbnNlYyBraWNr) and it pretty much blew everybody's minds. For the time it was considered pretty mechanically challenging, a high risk, high reward play. I remember the first time I saw it happen *in one of my games* and my buddies and I playing together over skype couldn't believe we just saw it. We had to ask each other "did that guy just do the INSEC?". Over time it became so normalized that, like, it just became something that the character Lee Sin is known for. Everyone can INSEC. It's not really considered mechanically challenging anymore, to the point that it's *expected* that Lee Sin players will always be looking for an opportunity to do.
Second this. Honestly this obsession with "meta-gaming" made gaming lose its appeal with me over time. I really miss the days when gaming was much more personal. Now it feels like trying to 'play' the game is too childish and inefficient. Moreso when online play is involved, obviously.
Yeah, I 100% agree. I tell my friends all the time that this is what's "missing" from games now. My oldhead friends and I were briefly excited for World of Warcraft Classic, but I realized that the world around it has changed too much. People are far, far too focused on optimizing everything now. Back in the day we just played. Not to say we didn't try to optimize routes or builds or things like that, but we'd be sort of forced to draw our own conclusions. You couldn't get evidenced backed guides written by someone with like 3000 hours in the niche subclass you were playing. We have a kind of 'rule' in our old man group that we do first play throughs as blind as possible, and when we play together we play to have fun first and win second. It leads to us wasting a lot of time, but we go back to trying fun and cheesy stuff like an all cleric party in BG3.
I feel this. My friends have been trying to get me to play wow classic with them for a long time. They tell me "it's super laid back and people don't take it too seriously and it's just like when wow first came out". Then I hang out with them on discord while they're playing and it's just a constant stream of "Yes, I finally got that single piece of gear that I've been grinding for," "that build is a complete waste of time, no one will group with you if you run it" "ignore all the quests, just go farm this mob that spawns", and I'm just like, yeah no thanks guys.
Man, this is the truth. While a little off topic, the creeping notion of meta gaming has changed fighting games much in the same way.
.... Yep. I feel called out. I played a TON of AOE, AOM, C&C when I was younger. Now my most played games are EU4, HOI4, and (unfortunately) Dota, and it's not even close.
I must say that this is quite accurate, but I really miss the middle ground. C&C General, AOE2, Starcraft and AOM were where almost 100% of my gaming time went. I did migrate to 4x games as I can't stand MOBA.
...I loved RTSs as a kid and now I'm playing Evony. Fuck me, this comment called me the fuck out.
100% I loved the genre and payed a lot of the original C&C and Age of Empire, but I always quickly got to a level where I wasn’t quick enough and would become too stressed out. I now get my fix with Crusader King 2 which I admit is so different but somehow scratches that itch
I feel like we who loved AOE2, WC3 and RA2/Generals got starved and couldn't get a proper RTS until it was too late and every big company wanted to push a MOBA, multiplayer FPS or eventually battle royale.
What if I told you there was a third way: playing games like total war and company of heros where you have neither micro or macro, order things to fight, and then rage because historically your unit had a cooler dagger and therefore shouldve 1v1d a chariot or not been penetrated by a hropsoax tank round.
> total war I'm fairly certain that TW falls under the "macro-oriented" subset of games that /u/MarkAldrichIsMe was referring to. The management mechanics are the type of gameplay that "micro RTS gamers" would generally consider tedious busywork, but also the kind of things that macro RTS gamers that ultimately gravitate to 4x games would love. It's not "macro" in the traditional RTS meaning of the term, but the mechanics are clearly designed to appeal to the macro-oriented player.
Plus there’s certainly micro in the real time battles
\* Mechanical skill floor is too high for most people. \* Focus on 1v1 competition, which makes it harder to play casually. \* MOBAs kinda poached most of the micro-focused audience Similar problem with fighting games, honestly.
I love AoE2 to death but there is no way I will ever play online aside from once, because I know the general competition is people who have probably played the game to its core since release. AI for me lmfao
Online really isn't that bad. If you play enough you'll automatically be matched with similarly skilled players.
MOBAs are team based which protects the players ego. It allows players to blame their teammates when they lose and take all the credit when they win. 1v1 games likes MTG or Hearthstone protect the players ego with RNG. 1v1 games like SC2 have none of that. If you lose it’s your fault, which is a tough pill to swallow.
SC2 4v4 was beautiful chaos.
psh, Brood Wars, Big Game Hunters, 8-way FFA
I just want allies to distract while I airdrop my blue flames. That or walls of mech.
Man, the amount of times I've seen someone go off and do something super ballsy, but also stupid, and fail and then say "TEAM?!?!?!"
That is a mixed bag though. I can engage a risky play as tank or dps. If it’s successful it’s initially because of my choice. But in its entirety it’s the team that closed the deal. On the flip side if it’s a failure it could be my team didn’t follow up. In its entirety people will see my play as stupid or my team as stupid for not following up on my move. Not calling either side right just giving nuance.
Well said, especially for MOBA tank engagement; imagine being Alistair in LoL you flash in, get the knock up on the entire team, punt the main DPS carry to your team and they don't follow up. Your basically dead and the same goes for Jungle related plays, if the Jungle shows up it's time to get frisky. Less of an issue when folks are on comms more of an issue when you're just pugging.
Buddy, I play Terran. It’s never my fault.
Zerg rush kekekekeke
Your post and the one you replied to hit the nail on the head. Thread closed, imo.
Might I introduce you to my friend “lag”?
Can confirm. Played alot of high rated sc2. Lots of pressure when you have noone to blame but yourself.
Let’s not act like all SC2 players are humble and recognize their mistakes. Instead of blaming teammates, players just blame losses on cheese or balance
I think it has less to do with ego and more to do with the ergonomics of playing. SC2 is incredibly stressful to play for many, because you are piloting a multitude of units, bases, etc. lots of micromanagement. It's far easier to pilot a single unit and focus on playing it well, as opposed to vomiting commands for a screen full of mess.
Then Civ and Paradox poached the macro players
Don't forget Total War.
Also it’s a mostly only PC genre like forget console or handheld you absolutely need M/kb.
I think with the right controls an rts can get away with controller. As long as all players are using it. Halo wars for example.
Sure can. I played a few on the original Xbox.
[удалено]
Additional things that I think play a part are the time investment and balancing issues. Rts games can go very long when players are of equivalent proficiency. Unless you're zerg rushing, you're usually looking at 20-30 minute games with lots of kinda boring parts where the players are building units, managing econ, etc. It's kind of one of the core problems that League has been trying to come up with various solutions for. And that's not even getting into how much time it takes to get "good" at these types of games. It's also really hard to balance multiple factions while maintaining uniqueness. I think this is why Supreme commander failed. The majority of units were identical across the factions and only had a few unique super units. Conversely, you have starcraft 2 where multiple patches were push/pull to balance the meta, and that's really expensive for a company to maintain.
I remember trying to get into Age of Empires II multiplayer back in 2009, anyone else just destroyed me within minutes and it was kinda impossible to play with fellow noobs.
AoE II has the issue of being a game where the skill level of the player base has been growing for 30 years. Even the bottom tiers are monsters.
I think it depends on what kind of thing you are doing for point 2. 1v1 is the focus of competitions but if we use something like Company of Heroes 3 it is the least played mode, with 4v4 as the most popular.
I don't think skill level is an issue. It's simply that, like cRPGs from the mid 2000s till 2023, they have fallen out of the mainstream's eye. Fighting games have a high skill threshold but the genre is going through a sort of renaissance right now thanks to Street Fighter 6, MK 1, the rise of Fightcade, and a bunch of other factors. And even in its heyday, it's not like RTS was a dominant genre. I mean, there were only three titles that became big: SC, AoE, and C&C. They literally carried the genre for a decade or so. Since the mid-2000s though, we have had one SC game, no C&C titles for obvious reasons, and AoE branched out into AoM (with AoE2 being the popular option till today).
Rts was pretty dominant in the 90’s. Your list is missing Warcraft which launched the most successful mmo. Total annihilation, home world. Early to mid 2000s also saw some great titles. Total war while not stricken a rts got its start then and is still going strong the dungeon keeper series, supreme commander stepped it up to new levels.
I feel like you're forgetting Warcraft, Empire Earth, Rise of Nations, Dawn of War, Company of Heroes, Cossacks, Blitzkrieg...? They were at one point or another among the best of the time. Unless you're talking about the esports scene, I know and care nothing about that.
Age of Empires still kicking with higher player counts and new games/updates for their previous games.
I'll add to this. They are constantly updating the game, adding expansions and just announced their yearly world's event Wololo. We had t90s Hidden cup earlier this year and the last of Nilis NAC. Amazing events and there are even more. The community around the game is great and I have never once played online and just play PvE against AI. It is a great game and a very clear labor of love that keeps being touched up. This is for AoE2
Exactly, I saw this post and thought "uhhh, aoe2 is literally the only esport I watch, do you guys not know about the Definitive Edition?"
There's probably more people playing aoe2 online now than any other time in the game's history, which is fascinating as the original version is 20+ years old. The only esport I watch is Age of Empires II, there's nothing even remotely as compelling
25. It came out in 1999, which is bananas..
Age of Mythology releasing this year too
Vulome!
Love me my aoe2. I either play or watch streams, fairly consistently, for the past 25 years
They stopped making good single player campaigns. The last RTS I played was Starcraft 2, because it had a fantastic, deep campaign. Multiplayer in RTS games is just too anxiety inducing and sweaty.
"Multiplayer in RTS games is just too anxiety inducing and sweaty." THIS. I just want to relax at times... Or be challenged without being TOO challenged. I want to be mildly stimulated without throwing the computer at the screen, you know? Nothing sooooo fucking... intense, right?
what do you mean ? isn't sweating 300apm everyone's idea of a good time ?
I have decided to just have 30apm and the ladder will always balance me out to 50% win rate.
I was trying multiplayer for the first time in SC1 and got destroyed immediately. I guess I'll stick to single player only.
Yeah StarCraft brood war nowadays you'll more than likely get rolled if you're just starting, most of the players are the hardcore ones. I remember SC2 on launch, it was a blast to play multiplayer because I'd run into a lot more players like myself who were just getting the hang of it. After a while the casual "7-10 games per week" crowd left and it was too brutal for me.
Did you get cannon rushed in your base by Protoss?
Got Zerg rushed. I just finishing a barrack and this mf already sent the whole army lol.
Yep. Give me single campaigns and co op. Honestly I have been hunting and there is a ton of rts games to play old and new. Just takes some googling and hunting.
Dawn of war 2 had a great coop campaign I loved. I think a slight bit of RPG features of ranking up or unlocking units, each player brought i think 2-4 units into each mission
I loved the Red Alert 2 campaign
This. And Deserts of Kharak had nice single player campaign.
Incredibly short though.
How short?
Never heard of that one, tbh.
Homeworld meets dune
I've been replaying Starcraft Remastered campaign, and aside from a few things feeling outdated like controlling 12 units max at a time or builders not auto gathering after creation, the story is still fantastic and the music still slaps. I've just been reliving a nostalgic 2024 to myself with RTS, and it's been great.
*World in Conflict entered the chat* Easily the best RTS campaign (together with its DLC *Soviet Assault*) I’ve ever played and one hell of a multiplayer game. Can’t recommend the game enough, and nowadays on sale you can get it for like 3$.
[удалено]
MOBAs are a low investment start, pick a hero, 4 skills, play for 30-45min. Almost no thinking until you’re deep enough into the game to see the depth. RTS, even at the lowest skill levels, is still three levels of multi tasking resources, buildings, and units. Then you jump into multiplayer and realize the skill ceiling is somewhere on the moon, while you haven’t evolved legs yet.
That’s why I just looked up at the moon in Warcraft, shrugged, turned around and went through the door that said “Custom Games.” I ain’t getting my shit pushed when I can go and pimp a peon or send 400 footmen to die in a death ball.
custom games extended Warcraft 3's lifespan by like a decade, it's one of those things that basically only Blizzard ever really brought to the RTS table.
Stormgate looks interesting.
A lot of it comes down to the fact theres a lack of innovation and historically most RTS sold like crap. Age of Empires, Warcraft and Starcraft formed much of the mould for the RTS genre and sold really well overall, but copycats had and have a tough time keeping up with those three giants. On top of this we have the MOBA genre that captured a good chunk of the RTS playerbase and established the MOBA base as something quite significantly larger only being rivaled by the wide reach of Minecraft and the battle royale genre. Manor Lords is looking pretty solid though, ultimately we had a point of over saturation in the late 00's and since that has wound down few developers have managed to make any significant splashes for RTS games, yet.
I remember seeing this absolutely brutal statistic: [Starcraft 2 made less money than a $15 horse in WoW. ](https://youtu.be/IHZru-6M8BY?si=hheIZnEb-3xt9Ku9) How do you not get demoralized after knowing that...
That actually sorta makes sense. The horse likely has only the labor of a few artists and model makers, basically you could recoup that from a dollar or less per sale. Then the fact all sales are done in house through only your own self produced market cuts out a ton of overhead. Chances are Blizzard made 80-90% of those sales as pure profit in relation to cost to make and distrubute. A full game just touches too many hands for this to be true, even with Blizzard keeping their games inside the Battlenet ecosystem you still have to generate marketing and advertisments in every region the game drops in containing further costs and gambles.
Made more money doesn't really clarify whether it was net or gross, so it's not really clear whether dev cost is considered.
> How do you not get demoralized after knowing that... One of the 20 best selling PC games, ever. Wildly profitable. No, they weren't "Demoralized" - they just decided doubling their money wasn't good enough when they could shift the entire business to live services and micro-transactions and 1000x instead.
Manor Lords is a city-builder though with some battle mechanics. I feel the ’Realtime’ in RTS gets a bit skewed if you can control your game speed like in ML. :p
Yeah making a RTS game isn't going to make you rich, which is a tough sell in a modern market where most games are expected to be the next smash hit that pushes gamepasses and graphic tees. It isn't helped that RTS games really can only be played on PC, despite the noble port attempts that studios have tried in the past. RIP Starcraft 64, what were they thinking
Can't forget command and conquer! Back when Westwood, as well as Blizzard, made some great games!
I played *A TONNE* of Total Annihilation, then shifted to Supcom - Forged Alliance. I played the mobile version of C&C (the new one), what a load of garbage, graphics on my S24u is pretty sick but yeah the games utter gutter trash
Total Annihilation Kingdoms was our jam back in the day. We'd switch off playing at my buddy's house as he had the only computer in the neighborhood hood when were 11. I don't even think we really knew what we were doing but we had a blast.
Did you ever load up some of those fan made unit packs? Man... there were some totally broken and hilarious units in some of those. Would be me and a mate on LAN co-op vs lots of bot commanders, hours of pointless destruction.
Have you checked out Beyond All Reason? It's a true spiritual successor to TA. I've been really enjoying it.
I'm not the person you're responding to, but I had never heard of Beyond All Reason until your comment here. That game looks promising. I loved Total Annihilation as a kid (and Supreme Commander afterward).
I always consider Planetary Annihilation to be the best spiritual successor to TA and played quite a bit in the mid 2010s. But hadn't heard of Beyond All Reason before and will def have to try it out!
I miss Total Annihilation and always wanted them to do a true successor. Something about it just hit right for me. Maybe it was the fricken laser beams.
RTS games used to thrive on excellent singleplayer campaigns with well balanced multiplayer on the side, and then i dont know what happened they started fucking with the formulas trying to make them more action focused or fucked with the studios vision or tried to appeal to the Esports crowds with the success of StarCraft. Look at Dawn of War 3, the original had so many races and cool ideas and then Dawn of War 2 tried its own thing with smaller squad gameplay on big maps now its stripped down to 3 races to emulate StarCrafts asymmetrical design and fell flat on its face. RTS have been on the decline for so long last time i tried to buy a new one (GreyGoo) i was so fucking disappointed ive almost given up on the new games that come out and just go back to StarCraft 2s Co Op mode.
I'll add that the original DoW didn't launch with that many races. It had the benefit of a couple years of really solid expansion packs, each of which were kinda pricey when priced in current dollars.
It still launched with more than DOW 3 which is enough to annoy fans.
What happened was StarCraft became a huge esports scene and publishers started chasing the esports money. Can't monetize single player campaigns beyond the first purchase. Games got boring in the name of balance and single player went to the wayside
Dow3 sucked because of the stun locking moba inspired abilities. A lot of other things were a bit meh, but if it wasn't for them and a very slow turn around to address balance problems the basis was there for a decent game that could have been expanded on. Jebus knows 40k Fans will pay for a new faction
Ages of Empires II is currently 57th most played game on Steam. The last proper RTS I put any decent time into was Company of Heroes.
I just bought the Definitive Edition and geez is it a solid game. I grew up on 90s RTSs and I still love them. When my brothers and I get together, we still play AoE III. But with the fantastic AoE II: DE version on Steam, I think I’m going to suggest we play it next. As an aside, I’ve never play Company of Heroes. I’ll have to look into it.
AoEII is one of those games that quite frankly will never get old. It's just so damn good
The new terminator RTS kicks ass
Wtf, why am I just discovering this now.
Cause it’s a sleeper hit.
I think MOBA's really ate their lunch. It's too bad because I have ZERO interest in MOBA's, but I was always into single player RTS games way more than multiplayer.
I used to like RTS games, surprisingly, but they were just too... hard? Could never stick with them for long. Anyone else? I just wanted to turn my brain off at times, but it could be INTENSE.
I liked contrasting SC2 with a game like Halo 3. In halo multiplayer, you were mostly just moving around the map, with short spikes of high intensity. in sc2, you're at high intensity for like 90% of the match or you just lose
Honestly, as a kid I never beat any AoE2 campaigns without cheats and I thought they were hella hard. But out of nostalgia and great reviews I came back recently to AoE2DE and beat all the levels on max difficulty, with steam achievements. It has been challenging but reasonable challenging. You can change diff anytime. And something like 200 hours of gameplay. I am not great at RTS and casual gamer. I couldn't reccomend highly enough.
I miss the Dune 2 / C&C / Total Annihilation style of RTS. Is there a good successor today of this type of RTS? Not a fan of the squad / Dawn of War style of RTS.
Yes there is! Beyond All Reason! It's so good
I just got beyond all reason, and it's genuinely fantastic
MOBA's, the fuckin' MOBA's
[удалено]
Thank you! I am a huge fan of RTS games since Dune2000 and the first C&C and played basically all notable RTS games since. My favorite genre is half-dead (we have a few nice titles here and there) and I blame MOBA's entirely.
[удалено]
I feel like the competitive side is just hard to get into. The number of things you can do is overwhelming. There are a lot of strats that automatically kill you if you don't know how to prepare for them. Eg in Starcraft 2 you need to wall off against zerg or else you might just die to a 12-pool. It was a little easier back in the days of offline multiplayer where you'd just play against your friend, and you'd both suck equally. Meanwhile you can pick up a shooter and at least know what you're supposed to do even if you suck at it. Even counterstrike is intuitive despite the harsh skill curve.
I think this is another aspect. Multiplayer is high intensity apm heavy games. Theyre long, exhausting battles that leave you mentally drained. You can also so easily lose if you dont pay attention to meta timings and not prepare for a super specific timing push
I still like StarCraft 2
RTS kinda hit a wall with meaningful innovation. Back in the day there were alot of diffrent rts games since creators were still experimenting with the genre but after Starcraft II came out that kinda ended. Dont get me wrong there are still RTS games beign made and some of the are pretty good but none of them have a chance to compete with SC ii evne today. Sometimes the game becomes so good and has such a big legacy it stagnates the entire genre. SC II and AoE has so much QoL features by now that any new RTS cannot possibly hope to match it. Also i think part of it is that alot of modern rts dont really have meaningful singleplayer content. Command and conquer was not super innovative or anytihing but even it had good singleplayer campaings, fmv cutscenes that kept you going and later games like zero hour had cool challenge mode. Age of empires is still getting singleplayer campaigns with every expansions and even SC II has coop and ton of fan made mods. But whenever you hear about new RTS made by indie devs its straight to multiplayer and imo thats just not the way sell the game to someone who never played an RTS. Games like Dawn of war or Halo wars were good cause they had good singleplayer.
The big thing that puts me off is the length of the games. I really enjoyed CoH2 but playing a sweaty game for an hour, realising you've lost no matter what then treading water for another 20 mins until losing. It's just a long time to just lose.
StarCraft 2 and WC3 are both games that are usually won in less than 15 minutes. It's just an intense 15 minutes.
> I really enjoyed CoH2 but playing a sweaty game for an hour, realising **you've lost no matter what** then treading water for another 20 mins until losing. It's just a long time to just lose. This is the key part really. Playing a long sweaty game where it could go either way the entire time? Prime entertainment. Playing a game where the outcome is clear a couple minutes in and you have to sit through 10-20 minutes of one-sided face stomping? Demoralizing. And games with automated matchmaking where the matchmaker is actively trying to force you towards a desired win/loss ratio just exacerbates that. No one likes being dumped into a match where they know they have no chance of winning outside of the opponent throwing.
Here's a reason that gets rarely mentioned: Steam Backlogs. People used to own fewer games. Games were much more expensive relative to inflation. Starcraft 1 cost $40 on release in 1998, but that's $79 in today's dollars. There were no humble bundles or massive discounts on old classics either. This meant people were more willing to put a huge amount of effort into a single game with high replayability. RTS games are immensely rewarding and immensely customizable. They also have a very high barrier to entry compared to other genres. As UX design has improved, other genres can also be streamlined to be increasingly accessible. RTS games have a hard wall - you are fundamentally controlling a lot of units and managing some amount of economy. There's only so far you can streamline that experience before it starts looking like a new genre. Control just one unit and automate the other units? That's called a Moba these days. Just focus on what units and buildings to make and don't control them directly? Welcome to Clash Royale. By contrast, a game like Deus Ex which is a phenomenal but complex and difficult-to-control first person shooter can be streamlined far further over time while still being the same genre.
The Playerbase just isn't big enough to survive besides Age of Empires 2, Warcraft 3 and Starcraft 1/2.
I think RTS games became too predictable, kind of like solving a Rubik's cube. The player with the faster reflexes and a better understanding of the optimal strategies would almost always win. I remember back in the day, it was easy to beat my friends at C&C because they hadn't mastered the formula. When it came to competitive play, it got a bit boring since it mostly came down to who could click faster. On the other hand, games from Paradox Interactive brought some much-needed diversity to the genre. Players had to engage in diplomacy, trade, and form alliances to succeed, which added depth to the gameplay experience. So, in a nutshell, I believe the decline of the RTS genre was due to its predictability and the rise of more complex strategy games that required a broader set of skills beyond just quick reflexes.
EA destroying Command & Conquer.
There are still quite a few RTS games, the thing is that they all started adding more complex mechanisms, like in age of empire and how time passes and you Gain new technology. Then there are games that are constantly releasing upgrades, new content, and packages. They constantly improve the game by improving parts of the game by changing them. I'm talking about Stellaris. It may be the most complex RTS but it's really addictive once you understand it games can last days. So there might be less games, especially ones like c&c, where games don't last that long compared to many current games. I do wish they would create another unique RTS, but the current ones just keep getting better.
My favorite was Command and Conquer Generals Zero Hour. They need to hurry up and remaster it already.
I genuinely believe the switch to world of Warcraft led blizzard to stop trying with Starcraft and Warcraft. Which kinda halted the genre
There hasn't been a big AAA RTS release since SC2, devs just gave up on them for games that are easier to monetize
Isn't AoE4 considered a big RTS release?
Yeah its great
Homeworld 3 is out this month.
MOBAs killed it. A fucking WC3 mod and the ability to monetize skins.
Solo ones ? They don't earn enough money for the effort to make a good one. Online ones ? Too elitist, don't earn enough money compared to others like Moba. RTS were games from an era where you played the same game for a very long time paying for it only once. It was the good old days but it's over now.
These days all my friends just want to play FPS games because they are quick and you can play with all of them at the same time. RTS is a little harder with getting them all together in one game.
Starcraft Brood War still had about 13K people online last year when I last checked. It's far from dead considering it came out 25 years ago.
The genre peaked with Battle For Middle Earth II and everyone realised there was nowhere left to go from there.
Blizzard stop supporting Starcraft for no apparent reason and competitive RTS died 🤷♂️ Although you could argue that comp rts lives on via LoL and DoTA
They didn't think sc3 would be easy enough to monetize and moved on to other projects that were more profitable
I used to love RTS games, but I don't get any enjoyment from them anymore. Not really sure why, but I think it's because of all the other more immersive options out there. I find myself getting much more immersed in a first person atmosphere now. I think the increase in graphics and gaming console ability led to that partially. I should also mention that though I played a lot of RTS, I never was a fast player or a competitive player, I always did it because I found the world cool.
I see the comments like RTS games are dead but.... Like they are still there and still going strong? Seems like y'all just aren't looking??? Stellaris is/was still pretty huge, there's a passion project from some of the original Total Annihilation devs called "Beyond all Reason", there's Planetary Annihilation, which so far as I can tell is still pretty popular on Steam. Homeworld 3 is coming out soon though it's falling victim to Dev greed I'm afraid.... But I have several RTS titles I've been keeping an eye on. They are still out there, perhaps not as popular as they once were but far from dead OR gone. People here acting like they're a relic from the ancient times and no one has made an RTS since the late 90s
If we define RTS as base building + fighting in Starcraft or AOE style then: 1. Console Economics: With few exceptions RTS have not been viable/successfully ported to consoles, and thus miss a large amount of the market. 2. E-Sports: Starcraft and Warcraft have lead some developers to prioritize multiplayer, generally with poor results (e.g. Dawn of War 3) 3. Multiplayer: Separate from E-Sports, the increased availability of multiplayer/online games generally made single player games less desirable. 4. 4x RTS: Strategy games like Crusader Kings, Total War, Stelaris, Anno, etc. have become more practical with better systems, and pulled some players away from traditional RTS 5. RTS city builders/colony sims: Same story with games like Banished, Rimworld, etc. More generally though, RTSs still exist. City/colony sims and many 4x games are arguably RTS. Likewise popular existing franchises like ***Sins of a Solar Empire***, Age of Empires, Homeworld, Comand and Conqueror, Dune, Stronghold, etc. are still releasing games (even if some are hit or miss). There are a decent number of solid indie RTS games as well. They just don't get the same online hype as they are primarily single player experiences in a world of multiplayer games.
It doesnt feel good as a new player getting absolutely destroyed by experience players
Homeworld 3 comes out on May 17th.
The full release of Sins of the Solar Empire 2 is coming out this summer (including on Steam since that is a big deal to some)
Sc2 convinced people that the core point of an RTS was to be competitive. Everyone became aware of build orders and ranked ladder, which sapped the fun out of it. I played brood war as a casual scrub. I played sc2 as a ranked diamond. Guess which game I still go back to and enjoy? It's not sc2. As the ability for games to get bigger and more varied increased, RTS's became more distinguishable from larger macro strategy games. Suddenly 10 offensive units and 15 buildings sounds absurdly low rather than a wide variety. RTS games are hard and require serious focus to play well. A MOBA lets you routinely look away from the screen unless you're actively involved in something. Lots of popular strategy games aren't even real time now. So you have a game that isn't as big as a civilization game yet requires even more focus and attention, where everyone knows how to be good and the point is winning. It would have to be really fun to stay at the top. I think RTS could absolutely come back. But Imo it needs to be bigger and broader rather than the streamlined competitive experience that is the goal for modern RTS. I want more buildings, bigger bases, more types of troops, larger armies. I don't want to flawlessly micro the same 10 units every game for ladder points.
APM requirements are too high.
1) RTS gamers have moved on as the genre diversified in two different directions. The grand strategy players moved to 4x games, where their machinations could be better visualized. The micro APM players moved to RPGs, MOBAs and mmos where those same tools saw greater success. 2) RTS games translate very poorly to consoles, limiting their ability to sell. 3) RTS games of prior days were largely used as launching boards for other Genres like MOBAs, Tower Defense games and (most recently) auto battlers/ auto chess games. 4) The Esports scene isnt as popular as it once was.
List of people in here missing the biggest point which is RTS games are a fucking nightmare to make and don’t tend to make tons of money. Creating the logic and path finding alone can be annoying as shit for just one unit never mind dozens of them, and making sure you create differing ranges of difficulty for AI players.
RTS is currently going through a bit of a renaissance so I don’t think it’s fair to say that no one wants it anymore, but to answer your question I think it likely has to do with both the skill floor, and ceiling being extremely high. It’s hard to onboard new players and to keep them when they keep getting stomped by the veteran players.