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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?

#41

Post by mellab2 »

isostatic wrote: post #34

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…

You might want to check out Railway Empire, it’s considered a spiritual successor.

Re: What Happened to the Real Time Strategy Genre?

#43

Post by eihli »

pmoriarty wrote: post #40

The last RTS I really enjoyed was Total Annihilation, but recently I gave Factorio a try and got pretty addicted. Great game.

Have you tried Supreme Commander? It's the spiritual successor to TA and is amazing. There's a community lobby, Forged Alliance Forever, that has a solid number of active players.

Re: What Happened to the Real Time Strategy Genre?

#44

Post by someexgamedev »

I've heard the RTS genre described as three sliders.

1. Amount of control over units

2. Amount of control over a hero

3. Amount of control over building infrastructure

By that definition, RTS is still alive and well. It's just that the particular position of those sliders has changed over time. We have MOBAs which set all the sliders to zero except the hero one. Mobile games like Clash of Clans and Clash Royale provide two more popular configurations.

As for what happened to the classic RTS config many grew up with in the 90s and oughties? My best guess is snuffed out by shifts in game dev economics. AAA single player games only work on consoles (where the controller never played well with RTS) and the near-requirement for every PC multiplayer game to present as an esport raises the buy-in too high

Re: What Happened to the Real Time Strategy Genre?

#46

Post by invalidOrTaken »

kyralis wrote: post #28
defertoreptar wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the core series focused too heavily on maximizing the experience for esports, and that spoiled the genre for the mid-range gamers that were its bread and butter. Out of curiosity, in what ways in particular did they do this?

Personally, I felt this way about SC2 as compared to SC1. I think one of the largest changes I noticed was an increase in the hardness of counters as well as an increase in the APM necessary to properly wield certain units. For the first point, in SC1, if I had suboptimal army composition against my opponent, I would likely lose any battles that ensued unless my tactics were quite superior- but I'd likely due some da…

I think a significant cause of this has been the simplistic/restrictivee definition of "macro" as "economy." There are other simple/powerful concepts that give a bigger bang for buck---stance, position, etc.

Re: What Happened to the Real Time Strategy Genre?

#47

Post by azernik »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #38
matthewowen wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

There are indeed retreat options in Total War.

Re: What Happened to the Real Time Strategy Genre?

#48

Post by furgooswft13 »

mdorazio wrote: post #14
Pfhreak wrote: post #8

Starcraft is still very much around. But I suspect people went to mobas like League of Legends because they wanted a more social, team based experience and they liked playing a hero.

I think Starcraft was actually part of what pushed people away from the RTS genre and into MOBAs. Blizzard deliberately made WC3 and then SC2 much faster-paced and more micro-based variants of their predecessors. Then they started pushing the e-sports angle, which in my opinion made it even less about the traditional strategy elements of RTS and more about APS, multi-tasking, ability matching, etc. MOBAs are then the…

Heh, Brood War is FAR more micro intensive than SC2, mostly by virtue of the game interface; terrible unit pathing, 12 unit selection limit, no "smart casting" etc. Add to that more cumbersome macro mechanics and the game is much more difficult and twitchy to play effectively than it's successor. Though I'll agree that SC2 is faster paced, especially with the 12 worker start since LOTV

WC3 was more hero focused, like MOBA's, which of course had their start in WC3 as custom maps.

It is of course ironic that Blizzard inadvertently spawned a genre that ended up crushing them in a field that arguably they also pioneered, e-sports.

Re: What Happened to the Real Time Strategy Genre?

#49

Post by dleslie »

SalimoS wrote: post #29
defertoreptar wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the core series focused too heavily on maximizing the experience for esports, and that spoiled the genre for the mid-range gamers that were its bread and butter. Out of curiosity, in what ways in particular did they do this?

What I can think of : I remember playing vs my friend a single game of c&c 3 tiberium wars for a 3 hours but seeing starcraft 2 the game end in 15 min in the esports.

I had epic total annihilation LAN parties that would last all day.

Re: What Happened to the Real Time Strategy Genre?

#50

Post by superkuh »

dchuk wrote: post #2

I don't play games much anymore, but when I did, I always had an affinity for RTS games(Command and Conquer, Age of Empires, Warcraft, etc), and Action RPGs (Diablo, Torchlight). It's exhausting to find games nowadays that don't nickel and dime you to succeed. I like the Kingdom Rush Tower Defense games on iPad when I'm traveling. Any other suggestions?

The Age of Empires 2 scene is actually growing these days. There's plenty of people to play at whatever skill level you are. It's better than ever.
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