Whatever happened to the RTS genre? (video)

[Boleskine]

 

[Jokzore]

They're too hard. Todays gamers aren't used to picking up a game and not being able to master it within 10 minutes ... so they don't buy them and if no one buys them why would anyone make them ?

 

[Nirvash]

Mobas (and more/better rts alternatives) happened.

I am a old rts player, i played the ancient starcraft ladder, i raped as the talebans in C&C generals, i was one of those guy stomping in warcraft 3 for years, but then i started dota and now i will likely never truly play a actual rts ever again.

Guess what, the moba gameplay was what i really wanted from rts.

Fuck building a base, fuck controlling dozens of minions managing sparse skills , fuck having to hotkey rotate x locations at infinitum.
That's just stupid manual menial stuff.

 

[Serus]

Mobas (and more/better rts alternatives) happened.

I am a old rts player, i played the ancient starcraft ladder, i raped as the talebans in C&C generals, i was one of those guy stomping in warcraft 3 for years, but then i started dota and now i will likely never truly play a actual rts ever again.

Guess what, the moba gameplay was what i really wanted from rts.

Fuck building a base, fuck controlling dozens of minions managing sparse skills , fuck having to hotkey rotate x locations at infinitum.
That's just stupid manual menial stuff.

It's all nice and might explain multi-player centered RTS. Except that in the 90s (and sometimes even later) RTS were often about single player. What you describe doesn't explain disappearance of single player RTSs.

My take on it - and it won't be popular: It's an inherently limited genre* that never evolved into anything interesting (in single player). Here I said it. Now to survive the storm...

*I mean Dune2/Warcraft/Starcraft, etc... clones obviously, the specific genre not every game with real time and strategy combined.

 

[Dzupakazul]

What Nirvash says might actually be quite true for the general populace.

Arguably, Starcraft and Warcraft 3 were the biggest games in the genre, and a huge amount of community for those games flocked to the custom maps that these games offered. Not just DotA - tower defenses and such. People who constantly competed in melee modes were actually a niche. Even the casual players who still enjoyed the RTS trappings preferred large team games, like the classic 3v3 (Big Game) Hunters in Brood War, because they were generally quick, volatile and could end up quite social, where you form an unstoppable Protoss ball with some friends from school or find good, communicative comrades in a random match to form a quick team with. But like, in general, old Blizzard games just let you play whatever - you could build your perfect base in a long turtly match on BGH and make a fuckton of Carriers to smash at the opponent who made a fuckton of Battlecruisers, you could go into a custom map that was about constantly spawning massive amounts of units that you only had to tell where to go, you could go play Footman Frenzy, you could go play DotA, you could play something like Lord of the Rings Hero Siege where your Jim Raynor is named Legolas and he levels up his gun to +150 and oneshots massive amounts of Uruk-hai Riders that are actually Ultralisks. Blizzard RTSes generally allowed you to have an entire playground full of toys when you bought the game, and many people who liked SC didn't play the actual hypercompetitive melee modes. To put it briefly, old battle.net was excellent for socializing and most RTS games came with a map editor, and many of those maps used the RTS trappings to come up with something entirely different.

I'd not agree with RTSes being "stupid manual menial stuff" since there's quite a lot of beauty to a game of SC, CoH, C&C, WC2/3 or DoW, but I do figure that for the most part, learning to play an RTS online is like learning how to play an instrument - you sit down and you have no clue what to do, and the first recommended course of action isn't "Sit there and play the same sonata with a lot of mistakes until you get it right", it's "Get used to the instrument, get comfortable with your sitting posture and figure out some of the most basic notes". There's as much emphasis on "real-time" as there is on "strategy", arguably more so on the former part. And there's really no way of making the "strategy" part more important because, ultimately, you will either deliver a game that is shallow mechanically by simply causing the "strategizing" to not go beyond rock-paper-scissors, or your game will still be mastered by the dedicated few that will maximize their mechanical efficiency.

The last time I had a discussion about this the prevalent argument was that "the genre stagnated ever since Starcraft and nobody tried to innovate past the SC formula" or that "Blizzard killed it", except that's patently not true because there's a massive difference between a Blizzard RTS and Supreme Commander, Dawn of War or even dud titles like Planetary Annihilation and Grey Goo. Those titles try really hard and some sustain quite a fandom to this day, but ultimately the RTS playerbase keeps being distributed towards a specific few old games. There hasn't been a smash hit that would "wow" everyone and become the mainstay modern go-to RTS game to play since Starcraft 2.

For what it's worth, you can still play plenty of RTSes in Anno 2017 - SC:R and SC2 are doing fine and are free to play, WC3 keeps receiving QoL patches from Blizzard and it has a few unofficial ladders that are highly active, WC2 has a league of enthusiasts, OpenRA's online community is still there, there's plenty of other cult communities like the one for Machines: Wired for War, people play CoH and DoW on Steam, etc. You will be simply hard-pressed to find an all-new game in the genre. Also probably because there are, in general, fewer games made nowadays than in the past.

In general, if you like RTSes and want to keep getting good at them for what they are, you keep on playing your favourite RTS game, and if you are bemoaning that they had been ruined by Koreans or Blizzard, you are probably better off playing turn-based games. And it's not an offense to either genre - it's just that I really do think that fast-paced rapid high APM gameplay that looks robotic to the outsider and that is quite exhausting to master (and probably why there isn't as much drive towards it) is here to stay for RTS games, and if you want to flex your brain muscles, you can go pick up turn-based strategy. Heroes of Might & Magic 3, for instance, recently got an online lobby functionality shipped with Horn of the Abyss.

 

[SCO]

Consoles, and devs that don't want to bother happened. Playing them on a console is just completely horrid in general, or at least to the complexity that deserves to be called 'rts'. 'Devs not wanting to bother' is a question of the AAA studios - if it can't be ported to console, they won't do it.

I'm going to mention that several 'lesser' studios that don't do RTS but TB strategy on the genre haven't given up on complex interaction games, but most still simplified their interaction models to list interfaces or the games themselves. Triumph, the guys that made endless legends, others. If it's a subconscious intention to keep the port to controller option open, playtesting showing decline of popularity of complex interfaces, the higher complexity spreadsheet market being corned by paradox, even there there is simplification.

RTS seem to have fallen on the awkward tangle of 'too fast, too complex, too easy to get destroyed in netplay, too hard to port to casual platforms'.

 

[Nirvash]

My take on it - and it won't be popular: It's an inherently limited genre* that never evolved into anything interesting (in single player). Here I said it. Now to survive the storm...

This is actually very true, rts core gameplay never improved in anything over the last 15 years or so, not even in the technical side.

Holy shit, stacraft is from 1998, when gta was still 2d

I'd not agree with RTSes being "stupid manual menial stuff" since there's quite a lot of beauty to a game of SC, CoH, C&C, WC2/3 or DoW, but I do figure that for the most part, learning to play an RTS online is like learning how to play an instrument - you sit down and you have no clue what to do, and the first recommended course of action isn't "Sit there and play the same sonata with a lot of mistakes until you get it right", it's "Get used to the instrument, get comfortable with your sitting posture and figure out some of the most basic notes". There's as much emphasis on "real-time" as there is on "strategy", arguably more so on the former part. And there's really no way of making the "strategy" part more important because, ultimately, you will either deliver a game that is shallow mechanically by simply causing the "strategizing" to not go beyond rock-paper-scissors, or your game will still be mastered by the dedicated few that will maximize their mechanical efficiency.

Is not about learning, is about the lack of fun and manual overload/rendundancy for little gain.

Like you said, there is little to no "strategy" for a seasoned rts player, is all about the easy paper/rock/scission meta and the actual "skill" is only how fast fingers and hotkey managment are.

 

[Gregz]

My take on it - and it won't be popular: It's an inherently limited genre* that never evolved into anything interesting (in single player). Here I said it. Now to survive the storm...

This is actually very true, rts core gameplay never improved in anything over the last 15 years or so, not even in the technical side.

Holy shit, stacraft is from 1998, when gta was still 2d

I'd not agree with RTSes being "stupid manual menial stuff" since there's quite a lot of beauty to a game of SC, CoH, C&C, WC2/3 or DoW, but I do figure that for the most part, learning to play an RTS online is like learning how to play an instrument - you sit down and you have no clue what to do, and the first recommended course of action isn't "Sit there and play the same sonata with a lot of mistakes until you get it right", it's "Get used to the instrument, get comfortable with your sitting posture and figure out some of the most basic notes". There's as much emphasis on "real-time" as there is on "strategy", arguably more so on the former part. And there's really no way of making the "strategy" part more important because, ultimately, you will either deliver a game that is shallow mechanically by simply causing the "strategizing" to not go beyond rock-paper-scissors, or your game will still be mastered by the dedicated few that will maximize their mechanical efficiency.

Is not about learning, is about the lack of fun and manual overload/rendundancy for little gain.

Like you said, there is little to no "strategy" for a seasoned rts player, is all about the easy paper/rock/scission meta and the actual "skill" is only how fast fingers and hotkey managment are.

Another way to say this, I think, is once you've played one RTS, you've played them all.

 

[Jagged Appliance]

My take on it - and it won't be popular: It's an inherently limited genre* that never evolved into anything interesting (in single player). Here I said it. Now to survive the storm...

This is actually very true, rts core gameplay never improved in anything over the last 15 years or so, not even in the technical side.

Holy shit, stacraft is from 1998, when gta was still 2d

I'd not agree with RTSes being "stupid manual menial stuff" since there's quite a lot of beauty to a game of SC, CoH, C&C, WC2/3 or DoW, but I do figure that for the most part, learning to play an RTS online is like learning how to play an instrument - you sit down and you have no clue what to do, and the first recommended course of action isn't "Sit there and play the same sonata with a lot of mistakes until you get it right", it's "Get used to the instrument, get comfortable with your sitting posture and figure out some of the most basic notes". There's as much emphasis on "real-time" as there is on "strategy", arguably more so on the former part. And there's really no way of making the "strategy" part more important because, ultimately, you will either deliver a game that is shallow mechanically by simply causing the "strategizing" to not go beyond rock-paper-scissors, or your game will still be mastered by the dedicated few that will maximize their mechanical efficiency.

Is not about learning, is about the lack of fun and manual overload/rendundancy for little gain.

Like you said, there is little to no "strategy" for a seasoned rts player, is all about the easy paper/rock/scission meta and the actual "skill" is only how fast fingers and hotkey managment are.

Another way to say this, I think, is once you've played one RTS, you've played them all.

It wouldn't be true though, there's always Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance.

 

[Dzupakazul]

Like you said, there is little to no "strategy" for a seasoned rts player, is all about the easy paper/rock/scission meta and the actual "skill" is only how fast fingers and hotkey managment are.

I've seen plenty of examples of really good players that were on the lower-APM side and utterly crushed with better understanding of the matchup and I've seen players who had been really fast and still didn't have much success. You gotta strike a "golden balance" and I'd still argue that after a certain APM ceiling you really ought to make up for it with some brains.

RTSes mostly aren't about making up devious plans as you stroke your manly stubble and ponder about the viability of one or another path, it's mostly about understanding relations between units and figuring out important timings. I'd argue that the kind of game sense you exert in an RTS is more like the game sense needed in pro basketball. And the "rock/paper/scissors" meta really isn't as prevalent in most of these games either I don't think; you make Marines, Medics, Tanks and Vessels and other dude makes Zerglings, Lurkers, Ultralisks and Defilers because those units generally are good against one another in different ways and it has been proven many years ago, but everything comes down to execution. I generally find games with a "true" rock/paper/scissors dynamic to be much more forgettable.

I'd say it's still a pretty "smart" genre, as it requires a certain degree of understanding and meta-knowledge and prediction. You can still learn a lot from watching your replays and from internalizing certain concepts you see in play that other people do. I generally find all the "RTS clutter" to be quite rewarding in the long run because once you get good at it, you can see a lot of depth in it and put in your own playstyle into the basics.

Another way to say this, I think, is once you've played one RTS, you've played them all.

Eh, that could be applied to genres like 4X, TBS and FPS as well, and for those genres people still clamor to games from 1998 even if there have been decent games released in between. There are some unavoidable trappings, but I still think there's a lot of difference between a Blizzard and a Relic RTS. For instance, I still wish we had a proper successor game building up on the concepts from Warcraft 3.

But yeah, I don't think there will ever be some "wham" game that will be a new breath of fresh air; if you take up some RTS game as a hobby, you probably ought to be ready to stick with it. The genre won't truly be "dead" to the people who still like the classics; you can spend thousands of hours on [your favourite RTS] even today. Just don't expect something to surpass your favourite game.

 

[34scell]

Myth's physics engine and randomisation gives it the variation that RTS games are lacking.

 

[Nirvash]

I've seen plenty of examples of really good players that were on the lower-APM side

No, you don't.

Those guys are still 10 times faster than the average player, and alot of APM can be pointless rotating locations/groups etc.

 

[Infinitron]

It's all nice and might explain multi-player centered RTS. Except that in the 90s (and sometimes even later) RTS were often about single player. What you describe doesn't explain disappearance of single player RTSs.

This is probably a minor factor overall, but one thing about single-player RTSes is that, in their heyday, they were the only genre capable of delivering and visualizing stories on an epic scale, stories about armies and wars and global conflict. First person shooters and other "ego-focused" genres weren't capable of that yet. But that's not the case anymore.

 

[Dzupakazul]

I've seen plenty of examples of really good players that were on the lower-APM side

No, you don't.

Testie was a Random player who delivered wins from Korean players like Stork while playing at like 100 APM. White-Ra is an Ukrainian dad in his late thirties who still plays very solidly and maintains a solid MMR on whichever server he plays on (he was A on ICCup before the Remaster hit). There are even Korean players with very "clean" playstyles who basically never spam and never have any clutter, and their games are very crisp to look at from an FPVOD, like Soulkey.

Ironically, people seem to believe that in the late 00s people had generally the best mechanics (we no longer have a Protoss like JangBi, who could cover an entire screen with Psionic Storms), but only in 2017, where fresh blood is scarce and the game's population dwindled, people playing SC: Remastered find use for units like Queens and Dark Archons. Yet the slow Canadian Testie still could deliver a win over top Korean Protoss Stork. Not saying a 100 APM player doesn't have a disadvantage compared to someone with 400 APM, but the point is that you can play an RTS at a satisfactory level without having to excel at mechanics, and that's something most RTS games don't drive home very well. Same as how you can reach a high rank in League of Legends while being a one-trick player, or play DotA without having the intricate knowledge of every single hero's exact auto range, exact damage range, and exact cancels - it helps and is probably mandatory if you wanna be a pro, but for the rest of us, picking Tidehunter and scoring juicy ultimates is just enough.

Those guys are still 10 times faster than the average player.

What's your metric of an "average player"? The kinda player who is into 1v1 melee? A BGHer? A compstomper? Someone who only plays campaigns? Your typical pro is literally only "10 times faster" than someone who plays Starcraft at like 40 APM, which is basically "I am utterly unused to the interface and I don't know where everything is; I spend more time checking out tooltips on stuff than playing". That's like comparing Fatal1ty to someone who plays Quake 3 with arrow keys and has "Fire!" on Left Control.

A while ago I did a test which was basically "try to play Protoss with just your right mouse hand and see what happens", and I managed to achieve 100 APM solely from remembering that I have to make Probes, Pylons, Gateways, units and tech up, which is the absolute basics that you need to feel like you can play Starcraft at an introductory level; the idea was to only use my mousehand to make sure that I never miss a Pylon, that all my Gates are producing, and so forth. White-Ra plays with 200 APM and he still owns on ladder; that means that to be among the high-tier players, you need to be just about twice as fast as someone who plays with just his mouse. it doesn't have anything to do with spamming. Nobody improves by just mashing their keyboard, emulating the warm-up that Korean players do at the start. If you elevate your APM to something like 400 by facerolling the keyboard, if you're not good, it will still plummet very low. It's not necessarily about speed and pointless clicking.

So if you're at all in the pool of people who want to play the most competitive mode, the "average player" already knows that Starcraft is generally won by having more shit than your opponent, so they will see the importance of fast clicking. I'm nowhere near "good", and I still have 200 APM. Which means APM =/= skill.

Like, you can reach a satisfying rank or have satisfying matches without having to be the absolute top. Another question is indeed whether you consider it worth it. It's perfectly understandable that someone who gets shat on in 10 minutes by Hydralisks and doesn't feel any merriment or sense of accomplishment from not dying to Hydralisks after 53 games where they died to Hydralisks. It's still a pretty daunting skill floor that you have to reach to even feel like you're being competitive. I mostly stuck with online RTSes for a while because I generally just enjoyed the process of self-improvement; the process of managing all that shit makes me feel good when I get it right. Like, after a Starcraft game, won or lost, I immediately feel like I can try another one. When I touched MOBAs for a bit, I ground out a high rank in stuff like LoL and played a bit of Dota, but I never felt such a huge compulsion to play if my duo partner or friends weren't around or if the end of season wasn't coming around. It just wasn't as engaging. I missed all the pointless clutter.

 

[Stavrophore]

Last homeworld deserts of kharak reminded me of ground control -one of the best RTS examples of tactical depth. Wargame series were pretty decent also. Sadly both of these games abandoned the base building part. I feel like the RTS genre wasn't evolving during the last years -the game technology is becoming more and more advanced enabling for a massive maps, which can accomodate both strategic and tactical needs. The problem is the typical game would last hours, and that's hardly acceptable for players -it might be good for a single player experience for a niche playerbase, but not for something that could be a cash cow, which needs multiplayer and toned down game time, something like 30 min per game at max.

 

[Cael]

RTS has phases within the same game. I never liked Starcraft because that game is all about rush-rush-rush, but in say, Age of Empires 2, the game is long enough that various phases becomes very visible.

The first phase tends to be the build up phase where you are rushing to get to the break point of the next Age. It is about speed, but the difference between 7 minutes and 8 minutes is relatively small.

Then comes the fork in the road. Some people attack in Feudal, some in Castle, others in Imperial. It all depends on the civiisation and the player's prior choices. The sheer number of different ways of doing things makes and keep things interesting. I have, for example, tower rushed, scout rushed, skirmisher rushed, build up to Imperial before attacking, you name it. There is a pretty wide range of strategies and tactics you can employ.

The last phase is when everyone (or rather those who still survived any prior attacks) is teched and built up and it becomes a game of resource management and real tactical combat. This is the part where I usually excel at (which, ironically, makes me the first target that my friends in the opposing team try to eliminate right from the start, but that is another story).

The problem is, a typical game of AoE will last over an hour. Some of our games lasted 2+ hours (and we are in Castle Age typically 14-15 minutes into the game). There is no way a modern player is going to last the distance. Starcraft, to me, was the beginning of that rot of faster, more mindless gameplay that focused on rote actions rather than actual decisions and strategy, but I may be wrong. I have always had a bias against Starcraft, which I openly acknowledge.

That is why RTS died, I think. People lost the ability to focus and think for long periods of time, too caught up with the 140 characters of Twatter and the instant gratification of Farcebook and Instagrunt.

 

[Dzupakazul]

I never liked Starcraft because that game is all about rush-rush-rush

Given that the most popular current playstyles are heavily oriented around setting up a strong economy and taking over the whole map I'd say it's patently not true. Mostly because many of the rush builds are all-in, and aggro builds in general lend themselves to a weaker economy, so if you do not weaken the enemy's economy properly, you kinda waste a lot of money. In particular, Terran vs Terran is a very slow, methodical matchup. You could defintely turn the argument to the other game, e.g. by arguing that you can just pick the Aztecs, Mayans or Celts every time to Dark-rush people.

Also I'd argue that the standard for AoE maps is that they're generally much bigger than the ones in Starcraft and the sense of scale and scope is grander. It takes around 6-7 minutes to get your first Barracks in AoE; that doesn't necessarily mean anything in a vacuum other than "the game's phases are longer". You can still end a game in a quick rush or even a cheese tactic.

Then comes the fork in the road. Some people attack in Feudal, some in Castle, others in Imperial.

And, likewise, there's a huge-ass difference between Proxy 2 Gateways, a regular 2 Gate Zealot Rush, a +1 Speedlot Timing Attack or just sitting on 3-4 Nexii and massing up a huge army in peace. Notably, the only tactic among those that doesn't ultimately try to get back on the rails and secure a fairly regular mid-game (and consequently, late game) is the Proxy Gateways (where you basically build your main production close to your enemy so that he can get attacked faster and your rush can be reinforced quicker, leaving you entirely defenseless to runbys and if you lose the rush, the counterattack will kill ya).

The last phase is when everyone (or rather those who still survived any prior attacks) is teched and built up and it becomes a game of resource management and real tactical combat.

I mean, *just based off of this sentence* I honestly do not see where AoE differs here from Starcraft. Or any other game in the genre. Those are some of the most basic trappings of RTS - people build bases, they gather resources (in some endlessly colourful ways; Dune 2 and C&C had the Harvester, Warcraft had mines and lumber, Starcraft inverted the Warcraft mechanic by making "lumber" the basic core resource and "gold" the "advanced, precious" one, DoW (and most Relic RTSes) has that requisition thing and zone control). It honestly just subscribes to the notion that people expressed here that the RTS genre generally is kinda sameish. I can tell you of plenty anecdotal SC games where "everyone was teched and built up and it became a game of resource management and real tactical combat". Once again, Terran vs Terran in Brood War favors the player who picks his engagements supercarefully; each game lasts 50 minutes.

I do acknowledge AoE2's 4 resources that are randomized on the map and often require quite a lot of exploration effort to access make that side of the gameplay harder to manage.

The problem is, a typical game of AoE will last over an hour.

Citation needed; I never had a game of AoE that lasted over an hour if I wasn't shooting the shit with a group of friends in a huge vs AI compstomp. "Long" games, in any RTS I've played, were generally constrained to like 50 minutes tops.

was the beginning of that rot of faster, more mindless gameplay that focused on rote actions rather than actual decisions and strategy

I think that's highly subjective. I disinctly recall having to learn build orders to have a chance in either an AoE1 or 2 lobby; if your game is followed by enough enthusiasts, they *are* going to come up with strats that are more optimal than others. The "rote" nature of actions in Starcraft isn't any more false or true here - Starcraft build orders do not go up to 100 supply, they are generally guidelines for the first 5-6 minutes of the game, and even they allow for some leeway or personal adjustments.

That is why RTS died, I think. People lost the ability to focus and think for long periods of time, too caught up with the 140 characters of Twatter and the instant gratification of Farcebook and Instagrunt.

If we assume Starcraft is all about rushing and that most games end in like 15-25 minutes, then DotA on average takes more time to finish a match. LoL has a minimum surrender timer of 20 minutes. Those are the games that are usually credited with "destroying the RTS genre", but they generally take longer to play.

I don't think it's particularly useful to go "oh, people are nowadays dumber and have shorter attention spans" to explain a broad phenomenon in that people just don't want to keep buying RTSes and mostly stick to the already pre-established communities that nobody feels like marketing towards because it's a risk; that's like implying fighting games or stuff like Counter-Strike are teh dum popamole because the rounds are short (even though getting through an entire competitive game of CS definitely can take an hour and you are likely to spend a lot of your time on downtime because everyone at some point dies in that game).

I think SCO has it right that the RTS genre is just generally inaccessible (for consoles and casuals) and that it's a tiny bit of a dinosaur genre that has some excellent games in it, but that it's overall hard to justify making a business expenditure for nowadays:
- Want to be a grand emperor overseeing a nation all the way down to the most intricate details? Civilization is there, and it's making bank, and it has a lot of clones, and it's trying to make itself much more accessible with every new entry.
- Want to do the above, but IN SPACE? SMAC is there, MoO had a new game, Stellaris exists.
- Want to roleplay a historical event or indulge in your fantasies of San Marino as a world power? Go play Europa Universalis, HoI and so forth.
- Want to have a battle of wits and get the feeling that you're playing a "thinking man's game" without having to feel resentment because someone managed to build units faster than you? Play any turn-based game, really, whether it's HoMM or Civ4 (because Civ5 and 6's multiplayer shat the bed).
- MOBAs have an easier mechanical level of entry (arguably a much steeper information level of entry) than RTS games and they allow you to feel like a hero because, well, you're literally playing a hero and you get to make sick plays that make you feel good, fulfill a role, and be social.
- Want to make an actual RTS? Great, now pray you can actually make a game that people will migrate to from their SC/AoE/AoM/DoW/WC/SupCom/RA/C&C traditionalism, as in, a game that people will actually want to play.

Like, there's a huge amount of games in that genre and we can generally agree they're playable and good; we just don't get new releases too often (Cossacks 3 is on the horizon, but I dunno much about that game). The lobbies for the aforementioned games aren't empty. So they generally have a long-lasting appeal if they're good. I don't think there's anything to lament, unless you have played literally everything in the genre and haven't found a game you'd like to spend some more time with. But I dunno if many RTS games are really worth it "just for the campaign" or "the story".

 

[Cael]

The problem is, a typical game of AoE will last over an hour.

Citation needed;

I stopped reading there and deleted the reply I was writing.

Citation needed? PLAY. THE. GAME.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

It's all nice and might explain multi-player centered RTS. Except that in the 90s (and sometimes even later) RTS were often about single player. What you describe doesn't explain disappearance of single player RTSs.

This is probably a minor factor overall, but one thing about single-player RTSes is that, in their heyday, they were the only genre capable of delivering and visualizing stories on an epic scale, stories about armies and wars and global conflict. First person shooters and other "ego-focused" genres weren't capable of that yet.

Heck, best example of this is that it used to be a big deal that Command & Conquer had so many FMVs. Like, back in the day Westwood and EA hyped the fact they had hired Michael Dorn to play the Atreides duke for the cutscenes in Emperor: Battle For Dune.

Nowadays this sort of thing is largely extinct and essentially turned into a meme of itself in the latter day Command & Conquer games.

 

[Dzupakazul]

Citation needed? PLAY. THE. GAME.

But... but I did. Numerous times. I played AoE2 quite a bit on its release (EDIT: actually, not on its release, but a couple years later, but the game was still huge at the time among a few of my schoolmates, so I always felt like it was a while ago, and the game still felt "fresh"; I blame living in Poland for that one), and I alluded to my experiences with the game in my post. I came up with actual gameplay examples I could think of. As I'm not well-versed in high-level AoE2 gameplay nowadays, I even looked up ZeroEmpires' (reportedly an AoE2 guru) channel to see what kind of games he posts, and they generally last like 30-50 minutes; not much material that lasts "over an hour", if any at all.

But now that I think of it - out of sheer respect for what you posted and making sure I didn't miss something crucial - I'm sorry, but I have to wonder:

(which, ironically, makes me the first target that my friends in the opposing team try to eliminate right from the start, but that is another story).

Do you mostly host huge, in-house team games with friends? Because I used to do that a lot for many RTS games I've played and those generally last a longer time, especially if the participants prefer to turtle behind static defense or set up a "no rush rule". In that case, I'd not be surprised if your games of AoE2 took over an hour, because I played in a ton of Starcraft games where everyone turtled and had massive Battlecruiser and Carrier battles with lots of spellcasters and crazy high-scale stuff going on, or games of DoW that ended with massing Baneblades, but nowhere do I see that it's an actual norm.

Heck, best example of this is that it used to be a big deal that Command & Conquer had so many FMVs. Like, back in the day Westwood and EA hyped the fact they had hired Michael Dorn to play the Atreides duke for the cutscenes in Emperor: Battle For Dune.

Nowadays this sort of thing is largely extinct and essentially turned into a meme of itself in the latter day Command & Conquer games.

Ya, and on that note, Blizzard's animation studio was also pretty top notch, with plenty of memorable cutscenes.

 

[Cael]

Citation needed? PLAY. THE. GAME.

But... but I did. Numerous times. I played AoE2 quite a bit on its release (EDIT: actually, not on its release, but a couple years later, but the game was still huge at the time among a few of my schoolmates, so I always felt like it was a while ago), and I alluded to my experiences with the game in my post. I came up with actual gameplay examples I could think of. As I'm not well-versed in high-level AoE2 gameplay nowadays, I even looked up ZeroEmpires (reportedly an AoE2 guru)'s channel to see what kind of games he posts, and they generally last like 30-50 minutes; not much material that lasts "over an hour", if any at all.

But now that I think of it - out of sheer respect for what you posted and making sure I didn't miss something crucial - I'm sorry, but I have to wonder:

(which, ironically, makes me the first target that my friends in the opposing team try to eliminate right from the start, but that is another story).

Do you mostly host huge, in-house team games with friends? Because I used to do that a lot for many RTS games I've played and those generally last a longer time, especially if the participants prefer to turtle behind static defense or set up a "no rush rule". In that case, I'd not be surprised if your games of AoE2 took over an hour, because I played in a ton of Starcraft games where everyone turtled and had massive Battlecruiser and Carrier battles with lots of spellcasters and crazy high-scale stuff going on, or games of DoW that ended with massing Baneblades, but nowhere do I see that it's an actual norm.

If you are not playing AoE with friends, what are you playing it for? The campaign?

I have played massive 4 humans vs 4 humans games, or 2 humans and 1 AI vs 5 AI on the hardest possible mode and any number of types in between. We were still playing the game up until 2009. I'd say your "numerous times" is a piddle in a pond in comparison.

 

[Dzupakazul]

If you are not playing AoE with friends, what are you playing it for? The campaign?

Random people in an online lobby that I can compete against and perhaps socialize with afterwards if I had a good match?

I have played massive 4 humans vs 4 humans games

The norm is still 1v1 modes or smaller-scale team games for these kinda games. It's hard as fuck to host a 4v4 sometimes; servers on those old games often shit themselves with 8 people, and the latency goes rampant.

or 2 humans and 1 AI vs 5 AI on the hardest possible mode and any number of types in between.

Vs AI games are usually grindfests that take a long time but after a while they become an exercise in cleaning up the AI that ran out of resources, steam, and isn't particularly smart at mounting an attack. They're really fun, but I dunno how much they can be utilized as a metric of what a "standard" game of AoE should be.

We were still playing the game up until 2009. I'd say your "numerous times" is a piddle in a pond in comparison.

Well, okay. Never have I ever accused you of not having played enough Starcraft or anything of the sort when attempting to engage with your perceptions on the online gameplay in that title that were much, much different from mine.

I did mention that I'm definitely not an authority of AoE nor would I consider myself to be one, but once again: I took the time to defer to materials by highly skilled people that play this game and their experience as to what a "typical AoE game" looks like is really far from "over one hour" in length. Forgive my confusion; it seemed like we were inadvertently talking about two vastly different things.

 

[Cael]

The norm is still 1v1 modes or smaller-scale team games for these kinda games. It's hard as fuck to host a 4v4 sometimes; servers on those old games often shit themselves with 8 people, and the latency goes rampant.

WRONG!

Either full 8 players in the game or go home.

You haven't played the game. 4 vs 4 is a REAL game of strategy and tactics, particularly when you have a range of expertise in both teams. Your current tasks can be anything from protecting a teammate to full frontal assault on an enemy base. My speciality was mobile reserve, hit and fade and interdiction. I was actually banned from playing Mongols.

 

[Dzupakazul]

You haven't played the game.

If you insist, but I think you might be in a minority when saying that, particularly when stating outright that the RTS genre died because, basically, it was overtaken by games that require a much lesser time expenditure (which, honestly, I don't think is true, and I provided examples to the contrary) due to people generally becoming dumber, which... just isn't an useful statement (mostly because it's very biased and emotional) to make when gauging this phenomenon. You also insist that only 8 player modes have any legitimacy, which I think is a reductionist attitude because that essentially implies that a 2v2 or 3v3 brawl between highly competent players is worthless compared to a 3v5 slugfest against the AI where - as much fun as the mode is - the outcome is generally preordained when the players have the know-how and there's plenty of cheese techniques to fool the AI, like in pretty much every game.

the 4 vs 4 is a REAL game of strategy and tactics, particularly when you have a range of expertise in both teams.

I never denied that it takes considerable skill to play in such an environment. But I don't think that it denies legitimacy from the other game modes that are available. I also don't think that the complexity of the game mode means that you can't systematize and standardize certain things, like you could in any other game. There's a shitton of complexity left in Blizzard RTSes as well, and a meta game for any game mode you can think of, but I will still be the first to admit that even if the meta evolves a fair bit even today (through certain adjustments and ideas), it's still mostly set in stone.

In fact, I decided to educate myself some more, because, hell, why not, AoE2 is a very good game and I actually enjoyed learning about its intricacies in highly advanced modern online play as I prepared to respond to you properly. If the popular high level AoE2 streamers are any indication, online players still rarely, if ever, get games that last over an hour. That ZeroEmpires guy I pointed out earlier considered a 52 minute 4v4 game to be "pretty long" and he even managed to fit in 4v4 games that were, on average, around 35 minutes long.

Given your highly emotional and anecdotal account and a note that you generally no longer keep in touch with the same group since 2009, I'd insist on maintaining that your experience isn't the norm. I'd also refrain from carrying on an attitude of superiority about the way you play your favourite games (something that I try to do myself, as I honestly respect dedicated players of all games in this noble genre, especially since I played and enjoyed a lot of them myself, even if I ended up returning to Starcraft), because this is a thread where we talk about why RTS games have fallen out of favour and not having a war about whose favourite RTS is the best.

 

[JarlFrank]

I loathe MOBAs with a passion for killing the RTS genre.

I grew up with RTS, they were one of my fav genres of my childhood. The Settlers, Settlers 2, Age of Empires, Age of Empires II, StarCraft, Stronghold, C&C Red Alert 2, Warcraft 3, Age of Mythology, Cossacks, American Conquest, Cossacks 2, and many many more. I played good ones and shit ones and mediocre ones and enjoyed most of them, even the bad ones.

When I played WC3 on a LAN party many years ago, my pals wanted to play these shitty custom maps which bored the shit out of me. Where's the basebuilding? Where's the resource management? Where's the maneuvering, strategy, and tactics? These custom maps were like shitty basic RPGs, even the most generic Diablo clone was better than WC3 custom maps, because WC3 is a strategy game with minor RPG elements (level up your hero) and its strength lies in the strategy, not the RPG.

When I play an RTS I want to build a base and exploit resources and manage these resource and recruit units and fight over gold mines and attack the enemy base from the flank and disrupt his economy etc etc.

Nowadays, I play a lot of AoE2 HD in multiplayer on Steam. It's great fun. It's what an RTS should be like. It's not only about microing a bunch of units, it's about managing your resources, defending your base and economy, controlling important spots on the map, balancing reaearch and production, trying to hit your enemy where he doesn't expect it, etc etc.

MOBAs are pure shit. All you do in them is micromanage a single unit. What the fuck. That's not what I play an RTS for.

Fuck MOBAs. I sincerely hope they die.