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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?

#181

Post by Noos »

Mirioron wrote: post #112
Noos wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think also that any competitive game over time will optimize for the experts or be optimized by experts. Fighting games is another example, and a lot of rhythm games are. MMOs that focus on PvP too. I think some people on reddit argued that this happened with fortnite, and was part of why Apex Legends got so popular; the casuals that liked to pvp got driven out by the experts and tried to start again in a new game.

> the casuals that liked to pvp got driven out by the experts and tried to start again in a new game. I find this to be a really interesting point. Many people would ask why they are playing a PvP game in the first place, if they're not interested in competing. I think it makes a lot of sense though, because they're not actually all that interested in playing against players. They just want more of a human-like chall…

It's not that they don't like to compete. It's that over time that the bar gets raised so high that they can't. People get too good while their skills don't increase as much or remain static. Or the effort needed to remain competitive is too much.

Re: What Happened to the Real Time Strategy Genre?

#182

Post by twright »

nlh wrote: post #169

I posted something similar in a child comment but wanted to see if anyone had suggestions: I bought an iPad excited for a generation of touch-optimizes RTS games and have been...disappointed. I played around with some of the MOBAs (Vainglory, etc) but that genre isn’t for me. Are there any great (or even decent) iOS games that fit the RTS bill? I see a ton in the App Store that match the description but most just end…

I have two: “rymdkapsel” is very in the category, no multiplayer but single player kept me occupied for a time. “Mini-Metro” I think is kinda in the category but with a lot more replayability. Neither have iaps but have a small upfront cost.

Re: What Happened to the Real Time Strategy Genre?

#183

Post by mcphage »

SeanBoocock wrote: post #144
b0rsuk wrote: post #72

Am I the only person missing the old C&C style games, before Generals? I'm not saying C&C:Generals was a bad game - it was quite popular - but from design point of view it was a Starcraft clone. They abandoned the old, quirky Dune2/C&C design with low count, remote harvesters, multiple factories which only sped up the rate of production, instantly deployed buildings, instant selling etc. These things had some flaws,…

You might be excited then by Command & Conquer Remastered: https://www.ea.com/news/details-command-and-conquer-remaster... . We're working with the community and regularly updating it on /r/commandandconquer (ie https://www.reddit.com/r/commandandconquer/comments/ct1oz8/r... ).

What year is that press release from? Is this a game that is out now, did it come out 5 years ago? Is it 2-3 years out from now?

Re: What Happened to the Real Time Strategy Genre?

#184

Post by BuckRogers »

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…

It's worse yet, as someone who started with the very first RTS (Dune) all the way to League of Legends, in most games your teammates have zero concept of late-game or playing defense. If they're not destroying from the start it's time to give up. The game is very good if played properly. No one is good enough at lower skill levels that better teamwork can't allow a come back from behind. Which is an amazing feeling.

For me, the test of a good game is if it's fun even if you're losing, which is the case with LoL but not as much with most traditional RTS.

Re: What Happened to the Real Time Strategy Genre?

#185

Post by detaro »

sanderjd wrote: post #53
Dylan16807 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an interesting view of the situation. I don't think I've ever seen someone say that APM requirements are higher in SC2. Notable enormous APM sinks in SC1 are the unit selection cap, the inability to give orders to multiple factories at a time, and the inability to make workers rally to the mineral line. Whether the counters are harder, I don't have enough knowledge to say.

Those are different uses of APM than what the parent is talking about. The unit selection cap is kind of a similar thing, but in practice, selecting an entire giant army and attacking with them all toward the same target at once is not competitive. So even without the unit selection cap, to win battles at high levels (even platinum and definetely diamond when I was playing) requires controlling small groups of differ…

On the other hand, design changes like special attacks like Psionic Storm only triggering for one of the selected units reduced required battle APM in SC2 too. (In SC1, if you had a group of units selected and triggered one of those attacks, all selected units would cast on that location, so you had to select a single one, cast, individually select the next one, cast, ... if you didn't want to waste your charges)

Re: What Happened to the Real Time Strategy Genre?

#186

Post by SeanBoocock »

mcphage wrote: post #183
SeanBoocock wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be excited then by Command & Conquer Remastered: https://www.ea.com/news/details-command-and-conquer-remaster... . We're working with the community and regularly updating it on /r/commandandconquer (ie https://www.reddit.com/r/commandandconquer/comments/ct1oz8/r... ).

What year is that press release from? Is this a game that is out now, did it come out 5 years ago? Is it 2-3 years out from now?

Pretty sure the press release is from the end of 2018. The game is still in development and you can follow along with development updates on the subreddit. Can’t comment on the timeline but it’s making exciting progress and I can’t wait to play it when it’s released (I’m tangentially involved on the EA/publisher side).

Re: What Happened to the Real Time Strategy Genre?

#187

Post by Fnoord »

slfnflctd wrote: post #155
axython wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll disagree so, so very much with this and I am certain this comes from someone who hasn't played the game for a while or played very casually. Yes, doing quests and just roaming around has became way easier than before, however the game has tons of room for anyone who actually wants a challenge. I don't want to go super deep, but high end raiding is still alive and finally started getting monetized/sponsored plus…

> what WoW lacks right now is difficult solo content This is what burned me out on it to begin with, and I'm still kinda there. Instead of providing interesting and difficult challenges, they introduced vast amounts of repetitive tediousness. I seek out well-crafted tension and release in my entertainment, but I don't have a lot of free time. On a regular basis, I want to struggle somewhat and maybe need a few attemp…

The thing Vanilla had was you were locked in a realm, faction, class, and spec. That was you. People learn to know you. You become friends. You build up a name. You know a mage who can come? Sure let me ask my friend, slfnflctd.

And you know what? I didn't even play Vanilla. But I have played a plethora of games where community was important, including SWTOR.

I had a similar feeling in Legion (the cross-realm pulp is terrible but PvP was decent). I was attached to one character, and no more split farm. However the RNG fest of legendaries and the mega grind of AP were not my cup of tea. I kinda liked the relic system and the augmentation aspect of the legendaries.

(I quit hardcore raiding end of WoD.)

Re: What Happened to the Real Time Strategy Genre?

#188

Post by Fnoord »

b0rsuk wrote: post #72

Am I the only person missing the old C&C style games, before Generals? I'm not saying C&C:Generals was a bad game - it was quite popular - but from design point of view it was a Starcraft clone. They abandoned the old, quirky Dune2/C&C design with low count, remote harvesters, multiple factories which only sped up the rate of production, instantly deployed buildings, instant selling etc. These things had some flaws,…

I only played RTS for single player. That is also how I started playing it since Dune II in 1993 as my first (I bought and played C&C, RA, WC2, WC3 when they were released).

What happened is that players have become better, better, better. Same as in WoW. It is due to documentation and theorycrafting being more widely available.

That, and the MOBA genre, is what happened to RTS. Multi-player game is also more difficult to pirate, and allows for a cash shop due to vanity items. Means RIP single player. And multi-player RTS is very competitive ie. not casual-friendly. It is not forgiving either.

Re: What Happened to the Real Time Strategy Genre?

#189

Post by nyhc99 »

SteveNuts wrote: post #172
nyhc99 wrote: post #170

I never liked the move to really fast-paced, micro-intensive play. Real Time doesn't have to mean such a flurry of movement and clicking. From Starcraft on it seems like the genre has pushed more and more towards the micromanagement game. Heroes exemplified that in WC3. A battle with more, slower moving units and simplified commands makes for a more tactical match-up that's less about hotkeys and razor-sharp reaction…

The total war series is pretty close to what you're talking about. The problem with your opinion is someone who _does_ do those things will always have an advantage over someone playing more passively.

Oh of course, but that added advantage can be minimized as the lag increases between the time you issue commands and the time you see results. You wouldn't want to eliminate that advantage though--all things being equal, you want the person who is more actively engaged to have a small edge. You just want the impact to be largely outweighed by broader tactical decisions.

Re: What Happened to the Real Time Strategy Genre?

#190

Post by Krasnol »

pfdietz wrote: post #174
Krasnol wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but Mythic+ is not the mainstream content most of the players experience in the game. And the anti-social behaviour and elitism surrounding those groups who do M+ has even become a meme. The mainstream wow content is ridiculously unchallenging. You are grinding dailys you can join up queues to do your daily/weekly run of the instances and repeat next Wednesday. This is what most of the people playing retail see…

> Yeah but Mythic+ is not the mainstream content most of the players experience in the game. So, your objection seems to be that players who don't want challenging content are catered to much at all. You don't want those players, who comprise most of the player population, to have "mainstream content". Viewed in that light, I don't see how your criticism can be viewed as legitimate.

> So, your objection seems to be that players who don't want challenging content are catered to much at all.

No it's not.

In fact it's the opposite. Many people want to do Mythics. In fact it's required for some professions to make sense. The problem is that if you don't have a raiding guild at hand or have participated in the M+ (or normal mythic) content from day 1 the elite won't take you along. Sometimes you even have to pay to be taken along.

Also: all this relates to the M+ content which is a fraction of the whole game which is unchallenging.

To wrap this up: a fraction of the game is challenging but remains almost unreachable for the general public due to the player base.

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