Why did Real Time Strategy genre die out?

[vota DC]

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.

But armies of exigo was starcraft with surface and underground.

 

[itsme]

It never died out. New RTS games have been popping up constantly over the years. But its just the genre didnt turn out to be as popular as other game types. With the rise of gaming popularity it kinda went behind the scenes.

Some RTS games I remember (apart from the already mentioned)
- Supreme Commander
- Dune the battle for Arrakis
- Warhammer Dawn of War
- several WW2 RTS games like Men of War, RUSE, etc
- modern day RTS like Wargame (same dev as RUSE)
- Ancestors Legacy (viking RTS)
- Pretorians
- S.W.I.N.E.
- etc etc.

 

[anvi]

This is why we can't have nice things. But I would argue that people are sheepish and popular games are mostly what gets promoted the hardest. If there was a new big budget RTS that was promoted as much as new FPSs, it could be big again.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Wonder if the fact this is a genre that only works on PC has something to do with it.

 

[itsme]

I don think anything other than low popularity of the genre has anything to do with this.
Look Dune Battle for Arrakis was ported to SEGA megadrive back in 1993. Starcraft was ported to Nintendo 64 in 2000.

 

[ghardy]

Wonder if the fact this is a genre that only works on PC has something to do with it.

That hasn't stopped them from trying...

 

[Lyric Suite]

I don think anything other than low popularity of the genre has anything to do with this.
Look Dune Battle for Arrakis was ported to SEGA megadrive back in 1993. Starcraft was ported to Nintendo 64 in 2000.

Just because they were ported doesn't mean they were successful or functional. How many Nintendo 64 Starcraft players do you think ended up on Battle.net?

RTS died because of consoles, just like arena shooters.

 

[itsme]

The fact that RTS cant be played with a gamepad is a bogus. I played Dune TBFA with a gamepad wo the modern stick on Sega MD and I loved it.
Also consider the fact that modern consoles can easily be used with M&K. Some players actually do just that.
I cant fucking imagine myself playing an FPS with a gamepad. But FPS is really popular on consoles.

 

[Damned Registrations]

RTS died because of consoles, just like arena shooters.

RTS literally started on consoles you moron.

 

[Hellraiser]

Wonder if the fact this is a genre that only works on PC has something to do with it.

Considering how the indie market looks like and the position of PC as a platform this is not the issue IMO.

I would sooner pin this on the fact RTS games are more demanding on the development side, and the type of programmers who can either write their own RTS engine are most likely doing something more profitable (and not necessarily in the games industry). You can't just bend Unity or Unreal for this, not at what are traditional RTS scales, those engines are optimized/designed around the needs of FPS/action games. The scale of RTS requires different handling of rendering, physics or pathfinding in order to be performant, and I imagine sometimes these are at odds with what an action game needs due to different scales (RTS can sacrifice/cut corners in collision logic, FPS/action games can't or they feel janky etc.).

For instance the They Are Billions devs tried Unity, ended up building their own engine - the development of which possibly killed them, despite the relative success of the game.

https://venturebeat.com/games/the-making-of-early-access-hit-they-are-billions/

We tried Unity at first, but it was impossible to move smoothly [with] even as little as 400 units. That’s why we decided to create our own engine, [which is] much more optimized,” said Arribas. “[We] iterated again and again, improving all aspects of the engine until we could move so many units. First it was 2,000, then 5,000, 10,000, 20,000, … and with the latest update up to 30,000.”

They struggled with Unity working with unit count that could be easily reached by a 1v1 zerg vs zerg match in Starcraft. Hell, plenty of late 90s RTS could easily beat the 400 unit count and have it playable on what is now considered laughably underpowered hardware (I don't remember what Celerons the internet cafe had back in the UT/Q3 release days, but 8 player Big Game Hunters FFA in Starcraft where everybody turtled like noobs to huge armies was not a problem).

 

[Lyric Suite]

RTS died because of consoles, just like arena shooters.

RTS literally started on consoles you moron.

Bullshit. Nobody gives a shit about Herzog Zwei. The genre begins with Dune 2 and only got big with Warcraft 2 and C&C.

 

[Dr1f7]

Wonder if the fact this is a genre that only works on PC has something to do with it.

uhm excuse me

 

[Lyric Suite]

The fact that RTS cant be played with a gamepad is a bogus. I played Dune TBFA with a gamepad wo the modern stick on Sega MD and I loved it.

Irrelevant. We are talking mass availability, not some personal anecdote of how you managed to play Starcraft with both hands tied to your dick. There's a disabled guy who plays games with his feet. And i'm sure he enjoys them very much, but that has shit to do with the rest of us.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Wonder if the fact this is a genre that only works on PC has something to do with it.

uhm excuse me

Shit dumbed down garbage that only had a following because of the Halo name (which didn't last long, since the company that made it crumbled right after), Halo itself being a shit game that does nothing to prove that shooters could work on a console.

I don't know why you faggots just want to be in denial about this, but the Xbox killed PC gaming. Nothing was ever the same and if something didn't work well on console, it was pretty much as good as dead.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Nobody gives a shit about Herzog Zwei except the guys who made every RTS for the next 5 years.

Dune 2 was on console within a year of release anyways. So was Populous, another early progenitor of these games.

Irrelevant. We are talking mass availability, not some personal anecdote of how you managed to play Starcraft with both hands tied to your dick. There's a disabled guy who plays games with his feet. And i'm sure he enjoys them very much, but that has shit to do with the rest of us.

I'm actually inclined to agree this is the problem, but it's got nothing to do with consoles and everything to do with people seeing pros play RTS (or arena shooters for that matter) and think 'Haha fuck no I can't do that' before even giving it a chance. Fighting game genre remains tiny for the same reason. Likewise, it made Souls really popular- watching some moron walk into a swinging blade trap triggers that 'fuck this guy sucks, I'd never fall for that' response in viewers.

Amusingly, of these 3 flagging genres, RTS really is totally accessible if people were willing to play on normal speed instead of the 2x that has been declared the standard for online play. I bet all these new indie spiritual successors don't even have lower speeds, they're all made by people who drank the koolaid.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Nobody gives a shit about Herzog Zwei except the guys who made every RTS for the next 5 years.

The game was never a commercial success and the "influence" it had on Dune 2 was accidental. Acting like the game was this big, momentous thing that people marveled at and rushed to imitate is a retroactive retcon. Westwood didn't even know the game existed until some Virgin executive brought it up to them:

https://web.archive.org/web/20111122065508/http://above-the-garage.com/rblts/vie16b.htm

So yes, nobody gave a shit about the game. It just happened to provide a solution to a problem they were facing when trying to come up with a way to adapt Dune to a video game setting, but the game that truly defined the genre and that started the whole thing was Dune 2.

 

[Lyric Suite]

RTS really is totally accessible if people were willing to play on normal speed instead of the 2x that has been declared the standard for online play

Proof that you are just retarded.

"The genre could totally work on a controller just slow down the game!".

Guess what retard, they had to do that to make first person shooters work on consoles too. That's why in all the console era shooters your character moves so slow it's literally impossible to perform and running and gunning (as my recent experience of playing Bioshock reminded me). This change didn't make the genre viable on cosole, it just made shooters shit and not worth playing anymore.

 

[Hellraiser]

I bet all these new indie spiritual successors don't even have lower speeds, they're all made by people who drank the koolaid.

Which indie spiritual successors do you mean though? The only indie one aiming for the gook APM insectoid crowd is Stormgate as far as I know.

I think anyway the slower paced RTS segment is nowadays catered to by the various builder and colony management games that are dime a dozen nowadays. Those have a lot of overlap with the style/needs of the casual RTS crowd that just liked to turtle and build pretty bases.

 

[ind33d]

Wonder if the fact this is a genre that only works on PC has something to do with it.

uhm excuse me

Shit dumbed down garbage that only had a following because of the Halo name (which didn't last long, since the company that made it crumbled right after), Halo itself being a shit game that does nothing to prove that shooters could work on a console.

I don't know why you faggots just want to be in denial about this, but the Xbox killed PC gaming. Nothing was ever the same and if something didn't work well on console, it was pretty much as good as dead.

halo wars was excellent aside from missing playable flood. cry some more

 

[Lyric Suite]

Wonder if the fact this is a genre that only works on PC has something to do with it.

uhm excuse me

Shit dumbed down garbage that only had a following because of the Halo name (which didn't last long, since the company that made it crumbled right after), Halo itself being a shit game that does nothing to prove that shooters could work on a console.

I don't know why you faggots just want to be in denial about this, but the Xbox killed PC gaming. Nothing was ever the same and if something didn't work well on console, it was pretty much as good as dead.

halo wars was excellent aside from missing playable flood. cry some more

It was dumbed down babby's first RTS for console morons, just like Halo itself was a dumbed down first person shooter.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I bet all these new indie spiritual successors don't even have lower speeds, they're all made by people who drank the koolaid.

Which indie spiritual successors do you mean though? The only indie one aiming for the gook APM insectoid crowd is Stormgate as far as I know.

I think anyway the slower paced RTS segment is nowadays catered to by the various builder and colony management games that are dime a dozen nowadays. Those have a lot of overlap with the style/needs of the casual RTS crowd that just liked to turtle and build pretty bases.

I haven't been keeping that much track to be honest. There's 3 or 4 floating around and they all look like knockoff blizzard to me.

I think you hit the nail on the head with the colony sim thing though. The RTS market got split and probably 70% or more of it was that casual crowd that likes to build shit instead of move the minimap 3 times a second while playing the keyboard like a crime drama hacker.

Though given LS' rabid response regarding game speed, I'm beginning to wonder if another reason is a decline in the number of adderal prescriptions being given out.

 

[ind33d]

Wonder if the fact this is a genre that only works on PC has something to do with it.

uhm excuse me

Shit dumbed down garbage that only had a following because of the Halo name (which didn't last long, since the company that made it crumbled right after), Halo itself being a shit game that does nothing to prove that shooters could work on a console.

I don't know why you faggots just want to be in denial about this, but the Xbox killed PC gaming. Nothing was ever the same and if something didn't work well on console, it was pretty much as good as dead.

halo wars was excellent aside from missing playable flood. cry some more

It was dumbed down babby's first RTS for console morons, just like Halo itself was a dumbed down first person shooter.

H1 was one of the most hardcore games ever. If you're good at Halo you can literally go entire matches without dying

 

[Damned Registrations]

H1 was one of the most hardcore games ever. If you're good at Halo you can literally go entire matches without dying

I knew a guy that played it and the sequel like crazy. Guy was a god damned wizard with grenades, had to play with handicaps or 3v1 to have any fun when we played vs matches together. Good times.

 

[Lyric Suite]

If you're good at Halo you can literally go entire matches without dying

By that metric, there's no such thing as a dumbed down game. Everything can be made to be "hardcore" if humans get involved who gives a fuck. The game is still dumbed down trash.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Though given LS' rabid response regarding game speed, I'm beginning to wonder if another reason is a decline in the number of adderal prescriptions being given out.

Where as your comment about game speed demonstrates why you shouldn't be part of this conversation.