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The Future of RTS

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Re: The Future of RTS

#21

Post by Lammy »

pmoriarty wrote: post #12
gamegoblin wrote: post #4

Something that isn't significantly touched on here that most RTSes neglect is physical logistics. That is, actually getting resources from the point of collection to the point of consumption. In most RTSes, once you collect resources they essentially go into a magic resource counter in the cloud. You can collect wood on one side of the map, and instantly create a building with that on the other side of the map. I wou…

"I would be really interested in playing an RTS that focused much less heavily on variety of combat, and much more heavily on variety of logistics." You've basically just described Factorio , which is all about logistics. I strongly encourage you to give it a try, not only because of this, but because it is one of the greatest games ever made -- especially when played with mods, which make it 100 times better than th…

OpenTTD has something like this, but it’s off by default: https://wiki.openttd.org/en/Manual/Passenger%20and%20cargo%2...

Re: The Future of RTS

#22

Post by AussieWog93 »

on_and_off wrote: post #20

my hot take on RTS : I like the genre (or rather used to like, the last one I loved was SupCom) but I wish somebody would make an RTS with no/minimal macro. Controlling the builder/peons units is a chore at best and I would love to see it streamlined a lot. For example just ask for a building to be built instead of finding/assigning builders to the task and micromanaging what they will do next. Dungeon Keeper comes t…

SupCom's still active, through Forged Alliance Forever. I got back into it a couple of months back and was pleasantly suprised by how easy it was to find a game.

Re: The Future of RTS

#23

Post by rurounijones »

gamegoblin wrote: post #4

Something that isn't significantly touched on here that most RTSes neglect is physical logistics. That is, actually getting resources from the point of collection to the point of consumption. In most RTSes, once you collect resources they essentially go into a magic resource counter in the cloud. You can collect wood on one side of the map, and instantly create a building with that on the other side of the map. I wou…

I agree wit you 100%

This is the aspect that I wish was implemented in my favourite games such as Stellaris since disrupting the logistics of the enemy and protecting your own requires a much more thoughtful setup by players

* Where to site supply dumps for front-line forces

* how to protect them

* how to get supplies to where they are needed safely from your home world / base to these supply dumps and then to the front lines.

* how to keep forces supplied if you break-through enemy lines

* How to disupt the enemies logistics

Without things like the above the games usually devolve into "Bigger army / fleet wins, with a bit of rock/paper/scissor based on unit composition"

Re: The Future of RTS

#24

Post by ABCLAW »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #16
lacker wrote: post #13

I was excited to read the first part - an analysis of why RTS games have become less popular - and a bit discouraged when the author didn’t follow up on that theme more, and instead reviewed a bunch of past RTS’s. I do completely agree with the analysis, though. RTS games are hard for a “casual” player to get into. It’s hard to even follow a game on Twitch, because the camera is frequently jumping around while a play…

There have been tons of analyses written on why RTS games have become less popular. If you're curious to read some, it should be pretty easy to google up. But the general theory is that RTS has lots of subsystems and very few people like all the subsystems in a single game, so the player base fragmented as gaming evolved. Tower defense games took the people who liked the base building part of RTSes. Slower-paced stra…

The RTS genre isn't really stuck - it's dead. Blizzard killed it. Studios left the genre when SC2 came out because at the time it was launched, SC:BW was, literally, e-sports. Power user players sought legitimacy for their games, hoping it would rise up to occupy that position, in the form of punishing, unfun mechanics. The result was that for a 4 year period prior to the release of SC2, games patched themselves to death to cater to the complaints of competitive players, players who promptly dropped the games they tailored to themselves for SC2.

Following SC2's announcement, RTS games almost stopped being developed entirely - no studio wanted to compete with blizzard's release. Unfortunately, Blizzard created a game which had very little of the UMS lobby scene, and very little of the captivating visual spectacle of SC:BW.

Blizzard's response to the decline of SC2 was made very clear very early; they didn't see the point in investing further in the genre when Hearthstone and WoW both featured recurring revenue and SC:BW had it's popularity owed to recurring fan based content at a set upfront price.

Re: The Future of RTS

#25

Post by Macha »

Glyptodon wrote: post #14

Are there any games that have players controling different slices in the same space, like one player controls economy, another player controls production/R&D, and a 3rd player controls tactical?

So a few RTS games (StarCraft 2, Steel Division 2 come to mind) allow multiple players to share control of the same units/resources so you could artificially divide up responsibilities. You need to go far away from RTS to a game like Artemis: Spaceship Bridge Simulator to find a game where players are dealing with distinct gameplay to a common goal in a shared space however

Re: The Future of RTS

#26

Post by yskchu »

gamegoblin wrote: post #4

Something that isn't significantly touched on here that most RTSes neglect is physical logistics. That is, actually getting resources from the point of collection to the point of consumption. In most RTSes, once you collect resources they essentially go into a magic resource counter in the cloud. You can collect wood on one side of the map, and instantly create a building with that on the other side of the map. I wou…

Adding another game with good logistics to the list of games:

The Wargame series from Eugen (the most recent one being Wargames: Red Dragon)

Logistics is a huge part of it, your armies can run out of ammo, or be stranded without fuel - there are dedicated units used for resupply.

Supply dumps, supply columns, and their protection, is a big part of the game as well.

Re: The Future of RTS

#27

Post by hnracer »

RTSs attract a certain personality type: the type of person that becomes an engineer, mathematician, scientist, or statistician. I met so many individuals from these career choices when I was playing RTSs that it was uncanny. Given this, it's no surprise to me that RTSs aren't wildly popular, the complexity and depth is just too much, it takes a systematizing nerd (of which there aren't many) to fully appreciate it.

I believe another reason is that these games are mostly 1-on-1, so they don't benefit from the same team play benefits and network effects as other games.

Re: The Future of RTS

#28

Post by the__alchemist »

Age of Empires 2 Definitive edition is thriving. I play regularly with a group of friends, and found out this week that several of my colleagues play it too. DE really is AOE2 in its finest form: Fixed netcode, responsiveness, matchmaking, and continuous patches and balance tweaks.

It's a 20-year old game that gets monthly patches, and is active enough to match you to opponent[s] in minutes.

Compared to SC2, I miss the asymmetry among Civs, and ability to pull off surprising strategies effectively. (eg Thor rushes, and going straight planetary fortress+Raven etc). AOE is more predictable by comparison.

Thoughts on if AOE2 DE players are mostly people who played the original, or if there are newer players? The pros seem to be a mix.

Re: The Future of RTS

#29

Post by stephc_int13 »

As a master-level player of SC2 and once a top-1000 ladder player of Brood War I would also love to a see this genre evolving and staying fresh.

I think that SC2 should be studied for its qualities but also for its mistakes.

I think it is overall an excellent game but at the same time I feel that it was not as well designed as SC1, even if patches improved it and fixed some glaring errors over time.

A few things that come to mind:

- Free units, they are extremely hard to balance and can easily lead to stale situations, and in my opinion they never feel right. And to be clear, projectiles are not free units.

- Spell casters able to stand a fight on their own and be massed, again it does not feel right and lead to imbalance/abuse. Spell casters should be support units, fragile and not scalable to a whole army.

- stackable aoe damage, because it leads to death ball armies that can be extremely difficult to engage, with somewhat difficult to read and seemingly random outcomes. A good aoe design is the SC1 inspired Psionic Storm, powerful but not stackable.

- Hero units, there is only one hero unit in SC2, for no good reason.

- Population cap, in SC2 the population is capped at 200 supply, this is an inheritance of SC1 technical limitation, but it has a strong impact on SC2 late game, not for the best as players tend to invest in defensive structures to compensate, leading to potentially static/ boring games.

Re: The Future of RTS

#30

Post by the__alchemist »

on_and_off wrote: post #20

my hot take on RTS : I like the genre (or rather used to like, the last one I loved was SupCom) but I wish somebody would make an RTS with no/minimal macro. Controlling the builder/peons units is a chore at best and I would love to see it streamlined a lot. For example just ask for a building to be built instead of finding/assigning builders to the task and micromanaging what they will do next. Dungeon Keeper comes t…

AOE2 Deathmatch mode? Thanks for bringing up Brutal Legend and Sacrifice - genuinely fun, interesting games.
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