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What Happened to the Real Time Strategy Genre?

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Re: What Happened to the Real Time Strategy Genre?

#31

Post by matthewowen »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #27
wanderer2323 wrote: post #19

The 'combined arms' approach where your 'macro' is turn-based and your 'micro' is real-time is doing very well in Total War franchise (briefly mentioned in the article). Turn-based aspect of settlement/empire management flows much better than real-time base-building aspect of the classic RTSes. Battles being fought in a separate real-time ux means that you can field thousands of troop models while micro-managing tens…

You say "richer", I say "removes important difficulty". Part of what makes the genre interesting is balancing your attention between these different aspects. But more importantly, it's critical to an RTS that you can use micro to disrupt enemy resource gathering. If all unit movement is decided on a turn-based world map, you can't sneak around a distracted army to take out a strategic point. Micro still influences wh…

> you can't sneak around a distracted army to take out a strategic point

Sure you can. In civ for example, sail your fleet one way under fog of war, move your army another to suck in units.

I would argue that sneaking based on "the human playing the video game was focused on something else" is a less compelling dynamic than sneaking based on "real" dynamics.

Re: What Happened to the Real Time Strategy Genre?

#32

Post by yellowapple »

I'd count Paradox's games (Hearts of Iron, Europa Universalis, Stellaris, etc.) as "real time" strategy; they're certainly not turn-based. And as far as strategy games go, they're nowadays the gold standard, IMO.

Looking forward to Homeworld 3. Fingers crossed for a Linux-native version, but if not, then hopefully it's as Wine/Proton-friendly as Homeworld: Remastered (and more so than Deserts of Kharak).

Re: What Happened to the Real Time Strategy Genre?

#33

Post by isostatic »

Total Annihilation holds a big part in my history. It was a great game for one thing, but annihilated.com inspired me to get into running a website.

Thanks to TA and annihilated, I ran my own website based on a game (a Star Trek one), which at peak in 1999 was getting 2000 uniques a day. Taking USD cheques (like $40) from doubleclick into my UK bank in my school uniform in 1998ish was a unique experience.

Thanks to that experience it drove me to where I am today.

As far as actual RTS game play, Red Alert was best in my view. One disc for soviet, one for allied. Tanya, Dogs, and Tesla Coils. So many hours, so little to show for it.

Re: What Happened to the Real Time Strategy Genre?

#34

Post by isostatic »

Not RTS, but certainly real time, and as old as the hills.

Railroad Tycoon

The sequels never really did it for me. Transport Tycoon sucked up the hours, but nothing really did it as much as the feel of that first game. Maybe it was the time — the CGA monitor (which couldn’t cope with Civilisation), no mouse of course. I did play it years later and it want the same.

I doubt that feeling can be recaptured. It probably never existed - its a sepia tomes memory of a feeling from a different time with different expectations - but for some reasons the original Railroad Tycoon really stuck with me.

Re: What Happened to the Real Time Strategy Genre?

#35

Post by Steven_Vellon »

2004, 2006, and 2007 for Dawn of War, CoH, and SC respectively. More well known titles like Red Alert 2, Command and Conquer Generals, and Warcraft 3 were even earlier than that. Starcraft 2 was the last "AAA" RTS game that I can think of. Deserts of Kharak is probably the only RTS game I've played in the last 8 years that I really enjoyed. I tried CoH 2, but the micro transactions put me off. Eugen's Wargame series and Steel Divison had interesting and deep nuanced mechanics, but single player was very rough and the multiplayer player base wasn't big enough to sustain a good matchmaking experience.

Personally, I think the main culprit is that MOBAs like DotA 2 and League of Legends are too similar in genre and won over much of the RTS player base. Anecdotally, most of the people I knew that were into SC 2 started playing League or Dota 2.

Edit: I totally blanked out on the Total War franchise. That's definitely a staple of mine, and still playing Rome 1 and Medieval 2 mods to this day.

Re: What Happened to the Real Time Strategy Genre?

#36

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

isostatic wrote: post #33

Total Annihilation holds a big part in my history. It was a great game for one thing, but annihilated.com inspired me to get into running a website. Thanks to TA and annihilated, I ran my own website based on a game (a Star Trek one), which at peak in 1999 was getting 2000 uniques a day. Taking USD cheques (like $40) from doubleclick into my UK bank in my school uniform in 1998ish was a unique experience. Thanks to t…

I liked TA much more than RA. The strategy felt deeper, plus I liked the idea of the Commander unit representing you on the battle field. Sending him into battle was a risky move. The D-Gun made him extremely powerful, but if he died, you lose.

The nukes in RA were also just plain pitiful and not really worth the time to build.

Re: What Happened to the Real Time Strategy Genre?

#37

Post by russellbeattie »

The domination of StarCraft has always bewildered me. I really loved the Battle for Middle Earth games back in the day as they were much more slow paced than SC. I absolutely loved spending an hour in total silence frantically constructing a base or two with massive armies before sending them off en masse against my opponent(s) - usually a friend or two connected via a LAN so you could hear their occasional grunts and chuckles, before cries of dismay or triumph. So fun!

Actually, when my son was little 10 years ago, we used to play Lego Battles on the Nintendo DS, which was a mini RTS and that was surprisingly fun as well! Definitely sad the genre disappeared.

Re: What Happened to the Real Time Strategy Genre?

#38

Post by Dylan16807 »

matthewowen wrote: post #31
Dylan16807 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say "richer", I say "removes important difficulty". Part of what makes the genre interesting is balancing your attention between these different aspects. But more importantly, it's critical to an RTS that you can use micro to disrupt enemy resource gathering. If all unit movement is decided on a turn-based world map, you can't sneak around a distracted army to take out a strategic point. Micro still influences wh…

> you can't sneak around a distracted army to take out a strategic point Sure you can. In civ for example, sail your fleet one way under fog of war, move your army another to suck in units. I would argue that sneaking based on "the human playing the video game was focused on something else" is a less compelling dynamic than sneaking based on "real" dynamics.

> Sure you can. In civ for example, sail your fleet one way under fog of war, move your army another to suck in units.

That's not getting around a distracted army.

Even if we ignore player focus, and pretend everyone can multitask perfectly, you're still losing options. You can't engage in a big fight on one side of a map just long enough for a flanking force to hit a critical target, then immediately retreat out of the main fight to avoid losses. With turn-based movement, that big fight is either unnecessary or it's likely to get your army crushed by the non-split-up force from lack of retreat options.

And you can't dodge an intercepting force with most forms of turn-based movement.

Re: What Happened to the Real Time Strategy Genre?

#39

Post by ebg13 »

blihp wrote: post #21
m463 wrote: post #15

I play older games, the ones without a forced online requirement or telemetry. I wonder if this colors the author's statistics, because he is getting his statistics from games that collect them. I have a library of steam games I downloaded then have been playing in offline mode for quite some time. free to play? (grind or pay) bah. I would love to hear people's suggestions for favorite offline games.

Myth II was my favorite game of the era. There were also a number of community created scenarios created for it. Highly recommended if you can get you hands on a CD for it. Not sure how well it still runs (or not) under Windows but it still runs great on Linux under Wine. It lives on as Project Magma ( http://projectmagma.net/ ) but the scenarios that shipped with Myth II are what made the game for me.

While both great games (we ignore III), the Myth games were better classified as real time tactics, not real time strategy. There is no growth past the beginning of a campaign. There is only range, terrain, and formations (veteran survivor prowess notwithstanding) until your units die. Also carpet bombing, remote lightning, and phantom trow kick glitch attacks. I'm not crying, you're crying.

To this day, though, I don't think a better pair of games has been made, and I will always be sad about Bungie abandoning the franchise during the Microsoft purchase.

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