Why did Real Time Strategy genre die out?

[thesheeep]

fine, let's settle on that, but the other part of this is not only that it's much less popular, there are no big players releasing new games. blizzard isn't doing it anymore and the other companies are now gone. aoe4 is just an iteration of an iteration, the rest are remakes.

Right, but remakes having huge success proves in itself that there is a demand here waiting to be fulfilled. Dead genres don't have a demand.
Not a mass market demand, mind you, but still one big enough to warrant significant investment in the millions of $$.

Remember that "single player games are dead" discussion? Nobody says that anymore after successes like Elden Ring or BG3 (technically also multiplayer, but you know...).
Or that "turn-based RPGs cannot be successful" one? Heh.... hehhehehe...

All it takes is one very good, high production value (let's say AA) game being very successful to wake up more studios.

We didn't have that "one very good, high production value game" recently. All the ones that tried in recent years were simply not good enough, which in turn was often misconstructed as the genre being in decline. In practically all cases due to design decisions that just make you facepalm - imagine how good that Age Of Sigmar game could have been if they hadn't bafflingly gone down the pseudo-moba-route that already killed DoW3 and with a protagonist that has the charm of a cheese grater. Seriously, how dumb can you be? I'm not mad, I'm just still shocked.
But that doesn't reflect on the state of a genre, it reflects on the state of developers (not just in RTS genre).

 

[Vic]

All it takes is one very good, high production value (let's say AA) game being very successful to wake up more studios.

I hope RTS will experience a revival like with CRPGs

maybe Warcraft 4 will do it

 

[Heroic Liberator]

I hope that Blizzard shuts down, insh'Allah.

 

[thesheeep]

maybe Warcraft 4 will do it

God, I hope not.
I refuse to give Blizzard money anymore, they have pulled too much crap in and around gaming.

It would be an absolute disaster if they of all devs were the ones to create that runaway success RTS.

I hope that Blizzard shuts down, insh'Allah.

Yes, this. But also very unlikely too happen.

 

[MasterofThunder]

Blizzard games aren't even good enough to 'consider' buying, not for a long time. I'd probably buy Diablo II and Warcraft III again if they were released on GOG though, and during a sale. The benefit of the Microsoft acquisition is that all of these terrible companies will go out of business at the same time. We've heard of nothing but layoffs this year, and it will only get worse.

Perhaps if Blizzard survives, they will do so as a much smaller, independent company with it's parasitic elements (i.e women and niggers) removed.

 

[Vic]

I'd probably buy Diablo II and Warcraft III again if they were released on GOG though,

both of these were re-released as remasters. W3R people shat on but D2R was well received and the definitive way to play it now.

 

[MasterofThunder]

I'm talking about their classic versions in this case, without DRM. I have absolutely zero interest in playing the remasters, despite the positive reception of Diablo II's effort. Just give me the original games DRM-free and that's all.

 

[Vic]

I'm talking about their classic versions in this case, without DRM. I have absolutely zero interest in playing the remasters, despite the positive reception of Diablo II's effort. Just give me the original games DRM-free and that's all.

it's never going to be DRM free because they're connected to their servers

 

[MasterofThunder]

I'm talking about their classic versions in this case, without DRM. I have absolutely zero interest in playing the remasters, despite the positive reception of Diablo II's effort. Just give me the original games DRM-free and that's all.

it's never going to be DRM free because they're connected to their servers

But they can be played offline without issue, their original versions at least. The lack of online play would be missed, but I'd settle for the single player content just fine.

 

[Vic]

I'm talking about their classic versions in this case, without DRM. I have absolutely zero interest in playing the remasters, despite the positive reception of Diablo II's effort. Just give me the original games DRM-free and that's all.

it's never going to be DRM free because they're connected to their servers

But they can be played offline without issue, their original versions at least. The lack of online play would be missed, but I'd settle for the single player content just fine.

nobody wants to play these games offline, at least not being locked into offline mode, especially not diablo 2 where you have the choice of either grinding for YEARS for an item or go and trade / buy it, which you can't do offline. So you would be stuck being a forever scrub unless you do like 1000 baal runs per day.

if you want a more casual, single player ARPG try Grim Dawn. There it's actually possible and realistic to gear solo.

 

[MasterofThunder]

I'm talking about their classic versions in this case, without DRM. I have absolutely zero interest in playing the remasters, despite the positive reception of Diablo II's effort. Just give me the original games DRM-free and that's all.

it's never going to be DRM free because they're connected to their servers

But they can be played offline without issue, their original versions at least. The lack of online play would be missed, but I'd settle for the single player content just fine.

nobody wants to play these games offline, at least not being locked into offline mode, especially not diablo 2 where you have the choice of either grinding for YEARS for an item or go and trade / buy it, which you can't do offline. So you would be stuck being a forever scrub unless you do like 1000 baal runs per day.

if you want a more casual, single player ARPG try Grim Dawn. There it's actually possible and realistic to gear solo.

I enjoyed playing both Diablo II and Warcraft 3 solo. And I'd rather they be available DRM-free, than not.

 

[MerchantKing]

 

[Vic]

currently playing factorio again and I was reminded that it might be one of the better current RTS, if played on the Deathworld setting, where enemies are hard and swarm you early and frequently.

 

[perfectslumbers]

Anyone who wants to know how RTS could find more appeal should look at StarCraft 2 co-op, it had a few million players and was very monetizable. Age of Empires 2 is another good example, constantly releasing new campaigns and coop and lots of fun whacky multiplayer game modes. Biggest problem with developing them is the devs will need to write their own netcode and pathfinding and blah blah blah and it's a big cost investment for a genre of middling popularity, and they'll need to develop multiple game modes in tandem. Usually a campaign to get people into it, pvp for sweaty people, and some sort of coop mode for people who finish the campaign and want to keep on that general track.

 

[Saldrone]

Real Time Strategy died out because the genre reached its peak with StarCraft Brood War and Age of Empires 2 already. So there is no reason to continue the bloat producing and wasting time with inferior products.

 

[Dr1f7]

uhh no everyone knows WC3 is peak rts

 

[anvi]

I like Beyond All Reason a lot.

 

[ghardy]

I know Tempest Rising is the "spiritual successor"-type for Command & Conquer, but what are the chances of an actual successor?

What is the state of the Command & Conquer franchise?

 

[anvi]

EA killed it like everything else

 

[ghardy]

Here's where we hope for a future where some remastering upstart studio (like Nightdive) wrangles with lawyers to obtain the rights to the long-dead franchise and remake the games for contemporary computers.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

These corpos are tight fisted and won’t do that. It’s only really practical to do what we can, like make new IPs.

 

[Caim]

I know Tempest Rising is the "spiritual successor"-type for Command & Conquer, but what are the chances of an actual successor?

What is the state of the Command & Conquer franchise?

Don't expect much since the money spent on making a new Command & Conquer can be better spent on a free to play shooter with microtransactions and season passes that will make an order of magnitude more money.

 

[anvi]

An RTS but instead of enemies there are loot boxes. Shoot the box and get a chance to win a tank that shoots more boxes. Or buy a fleet or tanks for 10 gold. 1 gold for just $19.99, non refundable.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

I wish it was easier to develop RTS. One of the biggest barriers to development is that you need to be an expert in making RTS from scratch to make one and can't piggyback off an existing RTS engine. (I mean, you can use OpenRA or SpringRTS, but it's not "sexy" like the popular engines.) The popular development engines like Unreal don't have support for it, so you have to do all the RTS specific coding yourself. Networking code (e.g. you need something like deterministic lockstep or comparable that produces replay files that aren't many gigabytes in size), artificial intelligence (on an army scale, with tactics and such), pathfinding (which can be done in a bunch of ways, but needs to be balanced in a sweet spot where units are sufficiently smart and reactive to be fun but don't form death balls that wreck balance), etc. And that's before you get into more advanced stuff like cover mechanics, height mechanics, naval combat, multi layered maps, 3D spaceship/submarine combat...

It's time consuming and expensive to develop, niche and risky and has low RoI... it's not surprising that most the of RTS in development are spiritual successors to established but essentially dead franchises like C&C and SC. Petroglyph already tried original IPs with novel mechanics like Universe at War and Grey Goo, only to fail and be reduced to making 8-bit Armies.

 

[anvi]

I agree although I think C&C series was doing ok until EA killed it with C&C4 and then a decade+ of nothing.