One the one hand, it's sad. Because the core reason for their decline, as I see it, is corporatization of gamedev.
Risk-averse managers maximize quantifiable income, so they prefer making mobile bullshit or palette swapped sweatshop farted WC Refunded to inventing another WC3 killer. And yes, management doesn't understand (or ignores) what made original holy RTSs successful, because they're overfocused on competitive gameplay, because they're accustomed to working with consumer audiences and SP has no organized audience they could influence.
Console-PC quarrel is of secondary importance (though consoletards are cancer).
On the other, RTS death is great because, while they were great at a time, "classical" RTS are also cancer generators for several reasons.
First, they're often taxing on attention and reaction time. Cybersport-focused games have limited potential audience (just like real professional sport audience is much smaller than the audience of everyday exercising or gym visits). It's not bad in itself (it's okay to like stuff I don't like). But, like in professional sport, exertion at mastering those games leads to sunk cost fallacy - the more you try to be "good" at a game, the more important and unique it looks to you. In consequence, they create elitist groups, grouped around "meta" and current mechanics. And the more autistic they are the more vocal they become, and the more vocal they're the more incentives there're for dev management to lock gameplay in current meta in fear of "community" backlash.
This thread has some examples.
Secondly, the success of SC and WC and path dependency had created an "industry standard" that was, at least visibly, cybersport oriented. And because of that it stiffled designer creativity and led to blander gameplay. The gameplay became "balanced" - that is, symmetrical. Maps are symmetrical, resource availability is symmetrical, "racial" DoT has to be "balanced" at time-value scale, etc.
Compare it to, say:
- Dominions series, where nations are unequal and FFA+RNG create possibilities even for weaker nations to win.
- SC/WC campaigns that have varying goals and mechanics in different missions.
(e.g. for a time I thought that it would be cool to have dynamic maps in SC2: lava floods that turn your expansions into islands, random tornadoes that down your air units, maps spammed with bushes/smoke/fog that limit vision, etc. None of those materialized in competitive play).
To sum up, I value puzzle-like game approach more than time-value optimizations. I'd dare to say that most people do. A special kind of mind is required for player to find satisfaction in an endless repetition of the almost identical ingame situations and their optimization.
That is, speedrunners and aspergers might be pretty kewl, but I'm not one of them.
And why do I value a puzzle-like approach? Because I value decisions more than actions. My goal ingame is decisions per minute, not actions per minute.
Firstly, because it's interesting to make decisions. That's what I'm playing strategy games for. Secondly, because on APM scale I will always lose to a bot or some retard who masturbated on his build for several months.
Decisions have to be meaningful. And for that the game has to have a degree of uncertainty (FoW and randomness) on the one hand and a measure of control (exploration and player's stamina) on the other.
Switching from build 51 to build 76 might be a decision, but the builds themselves are not. That's why I find modern cybersport boring to watch. Players make maybe three meaningful decisions per game.
Plot-enriched games and sandboxes allow devs to slack on decisions significantly.
I don't really care about knight's DOT while I watch Arthas murderhoboing through the land. I don't care about unit economics (sorry) as I cram my fat long build into that pretty ravine I've just discovered.
But it goes counter to all the "classical" RTS mechanics.
That's why they should remain dead and should they even twitch a bit, we should crush them with the biggest concrete block we can manage.
Recently, Mechabellum was mentioned ITT. It does away with micromanagement by eliminating APM masturbation completely. Alas, it has some design decisions I don't like (no geometry on map, no mechanical variability because there's too much focus on competitive play). And, more importantly, it's not a RTS. It's an engine builder. There're many of those around (from boardgameland there're Glory to Rome, Chudyk's Innovation, Race for the Galaxy, Star Realms, Cthulhu Realms; I especially like the latter and GtR). And it's good that RTS crowd experiments with mechanics.
Maybe some day we'll get a RTS we all deserve.
P.S. And if anyone would tell me that if I want to have strategy I should fuck off to TBS land and leave RTS coomers alone, first I'll say that I've already done that, because your shit is unplayable, but then I'll also say, no, STFU nigger, you have no monopoly on watching toy soldiers raping each other on live feed. Especially since you don't look at them at all, you're too preoccupied with your micropenis.
