Why did Real Time Strategy genre die out?

[mediocrepoet]

Battle Realms was fun because it had great 3D graphics for the time, and also it had some of that complexity I was talking about earlier: you didn't just produce elite units, you had to combine simpler units into them, for example, 4 soldiers would be converted into a samurai, or 4 ronin would be converted into a necromancer. There were a lot of unique heroes too.

And in a game like Stronghold, you didn't just plop down a building, a wall would change based on what was next to it, and had to be connected to other wall segments or gates, building would look different next to a wall than out in space, other buildings had an effect on the area around.

Dwarf Fortress was so much fun because at one point you had to connect an actual water source to your farms to water them, or to build a well, you had to build an actual water reservoir (for bonus points, connect it to rain pools on the surface with a system of tunnels and gates to refill with rainwater periodically), and then you built a well structure above that, so it wasnt just some simple fixed building, it was deep and dynamic shit.

This is the kind of stuff RTS games need to fulfill their true potential. Not the silly APM shit that's putting me to sleep just reading it, or some story based campaign.

This is all interesting, but it really does just sound like you're in the wrong genre and should check out some of the developments going on in the city builders like mentioned earlier, or in some of those survival crafting games. They tend to move in these types of directions to one degree or another and you're more likely to actually find or be able to inspire something closer to your dream game than in any RTS I've ever seen.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

I follow them, but most of them don't hit that sweetspot for me. A lot of them either have no military component at all or some really shallow one, I want a game with lots of combat, RPG like unit experience and development, quests, etc.

 

[mediocrepoet]

I just think it'd be easier (probably) to build combat and such into a sim heavy game than to build sim stuff into a standard RTS.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

This is all interesting, but it really does just sound like you're in the wrong genre and should check out some of the developments going on in the city builders like mentioned earlier, or in some of those survival crafting games.

Colony sims tend to have some overlap with RTS games because of the nature of colony sims. You generally have a lot of units(if you're lucky and prepared) and it has to be real time because of everything else going on. The nice thing about the rise of RTS games in the late 1990s and early 2000s is that they refined and figured out a lot of decent ways of handling the kind of combat most colony sim games require.

But you're right, a colony sim is not a long-term RTS. Colony sims share a lot more in common with tycoon games than they do with the RTS, but the combat is where there's some overlap.

 

[mediocrepoet]

This is all interesting, but it really does just sound like you're in the wrong genre and should check out some of the developments going on in the city builders like mentioned earlier, or in some of those survival crafting games.

Colony sims tend to have some overlap with RTS games because of the nature of colony sims. You generally have a lot of units(if you're lucky and prepared) and it has to be real time because of everything else going on. The nice thing about the rise of RTS games in the late 1990s and early 2000s is that they refined and figured out a lot of decent ways of handling the kind of combat most colony sim games require.

But you're right, a colony sim is not a long-term RTS. Colony sims share a lot more in common with tycoon games than they do with the RTS, but the combat is where there's some overlap.

What games are examples of this genre? I'm only familiar with things like turn-based 4Xs and such. Generally the real time stuff turns me off, though I started tooling around with Anno something or other and that seems to have some things in common with that, just not sure if it's the sort of game you're thinking of or not.

 

[Desman]

It's not "all about APM".

Even people with 400+ apm spam a lot of actions that inflates the number.

There are examples in starcraft broodwar where top pros had low apm, like Stork, who is one of the best players of all time. He had around 250 apm, and the average pro had over 400. He was still one of the best players.

Also to be that fast you need to know EXACTLY what you are doing the entire time, it's not just a muscle memory thing.

He plays protoss bro, you could be a really strong player (not Korean pro level but like top non Korean) with 130 apm back in the day.

The "strategy vs apm" debate is pretty funny like obviously in RTS at one point once the game is kinda "figured out" the best players are the guys with the best execution and multitasking micro/macro (especially in games like broodwar with oldschool UI) but in FPS like quake the best players are not necessilary the guys with the best aim or reflexes, it's the guys who have the best map control and memory. Ironically the shooter game often ends up being more "strategic" than the RTS game.

What does it mean that a game is "figured out"? It doesn't mean anyone can just simply check what the best strategies are, and then focus on the execution. No, it means that the top people are so good at understanding the strategy of the game, that it comes to really tiny nuances - not just differences in unit control, but ever developing better understanding of what to do when you see your opponent doing this or that.

"Figured out" means that there is no more new crazy build orders, guys know all the builds and spend literally their life practicing the execution over and over.
I think you vastly overestimates the "strategy" part. Yes obviously there are plenty of nuances but when you are managing multi-pronged attacks while keeping an efficient economy and keeping your minerals low it's more about how fast you can act than how deep you can think. And since your whole army can evaporate in 2s seconds if your micro slips it's a bit more complex than "i will outsmart my opponent and build unit X to counter unit Y."
For exemple i never managed to play Terran or Zerg in broodwar even at low level, the mechanics were just too hard for me and i have watched thousands of hours replays/vods/streams so i had actually basic knowledge about the match ups. I just never managed to execute properly what i wanted to do against an actual real opponent.
The last time i had a big "wow that's insane what a crazy build" moment was when Bisu destroyed Saviour in 2006 with his infamous build. But the funny part was that it is precisely his crazy multitasking that enabled him to completly run around his opponent with sairs chasing ovies all over the map. For the average protoss player at the time this looked impossible, people were like how he is doing that to the best zerg player ?

Honestly its a bit like in sport. When Messi makes the defenders look like clowns in wheelchairs is he really outsmarting them or just a guy with insane motor coordination skills who is also faster ?

If you follow the life of a competitive RTS the inovative guys who dominate early on usually quickly leave the scene when knowledge of the builds spread and their mechanics get exposed by players who are not doing anything new or crazy but are just better overall (usually using strong safe optimized macro builds).

 

[Desman]

Given the longevity of the RTS, there's no way many enthusiasts would be playing all those or even most of them. When you buy an RTS, and you like it, chances are that you're going to be playing that for months, if not a year or more. That doesn't leave much room to buy 10 a year, let alone 41. You might hop on to something new, like Homeworld, and play it until you get bored with it. I think I played Total Annihilation off and on from 1998 to the early 2000s, despite buying Homeworld and a few others. I'd play around with them and then go back to Total Annihilation.

Yep, some RTS games lent themselves better to skirmish mode. For me that was Age of Empires II and then Empire Earth. However, in multiplayer, a lot of games were really fun. I know I went several times to my best friend very early on Saturday morning to play games via LAN straight from 7:00 till 20:00. Apart from the aforementioned two, Battle Realms, Cossacks: European Wars and Spellforce definitely played their role.
Of course, some RTS games had no skirmish mode/free play and those were more of a play & done affair. Like Sudden Strike, Sacrifice, Robo Rumble (IIRC) etc.

It's not "all about APM".

Even people with 400+ apm spam a lot of actions that inflates the number.

There are examples in starcraft broodwar where top pros had low apm, like Stork, who is one of the best players of all time. He had around 250 apm, and the average pro had over 400. He was still one of the best players.

Also to be that fast you need to know EXACTLY what you are doing the entire time, it's not just a muscle memory thing.

He plays protoss bro, you could be a really strong player (not Korean pro level but like top non Korean) with 130 apm back in the day.

The "strategy vs apm" debate is pretty funny like obviously in RTS at one point once the game is kinda "figured out" the best players are the guys with the best execution and multitasking micro/macro (especially in games like broodwar with oldschool UI) but in FPS like quake the best players are not necessilary the guys with the best aim or reflexes, it's the guys who have the best map control and memory. Ironically the shooter game often ends up being more "strategic" than the RTS game.

What does it mean that a game is "figured out"? It doesn't mean anyone can just simply check what the best strategies are, and then focus on the execution. No, it means that the top people are so good at understanding the strategy of the game, that it comes to really tiny nuances - not just differences in unit control, but ever developing better understanding of what to do when you see your opponent doing this or that.

Yeah, not sure either. Brood War never got "figured out" and constantly evolved/changed. New strategies were found and then countered.

Ah yea Jaedong the guy with insane mechanics who could macro like god himself while microing his mutas like if he was playing an UMS map
Dude could probably beat 95% of the players with just zerglings.

The video you just linked is actually a pretty good illustration of the dilemma. Is Jaedong a genius because his attack is perfectly timed (after practising hundred of games on this map against fellow protoss pro teamates) or he is just exploiting the poor smart "apm slow" Stork (who was always known as a PvT and PVP specialist anyway) by perfecly cloning his scourges to delete the sairs ?

 

[Gerrard]

It's not "all about APM".

Even people with 400+ apm spam a lot of actions that inflates the number.

There are examples in starcraft broodwar where top pros had low apm, like Stork, who is one of the best players of all time. He had around 250 apm, and the average pro had over 400. He was still one of the best players.

Also to be that fast you need to know EXACTLY what you are doing the entire time, it's not just a muscle memory thing.

It's hilarious when you autists think that 250APM (that's 4 per second) is low, in a fucking RTS out of all things.

 

[Desman]

It's funny but it is true, for me the biggest surprise was when i realized that to be a good quake player you need to memorize multiple items timing.
Imagine roleplaying as a watchmaker in a fucking FPS lol.

 

[Lucumo]

Yeah, not sure either. Brood War never got "figured out" and constantly evolved/changed. New strategies were found and then countered.

Ah yea Jaedong the guy with insane mechanics who could macro like god himself while microing his mutas like if he was playing an UMS map
Dude could probably beat 95% of the players with just zerglings.

The video you just linked is actually a pretty good illustration of the dilemma. Is Jaedong a genius because his attack is perfectly timed (after practising hundred of games on this map against fellow protoss pro teamates) or he is just exploiting the poor smart "apm slow" Stork (who was always known as a PvT and PVP specialist anyway) by perfecly cloning his scourges to delete the sairs ?

The first option, obviously. It's much, much harder to execute than good scourge-cloning which is more of a mid-level player skill. Not to mention it wouldn't have mattered at all if he hadn't hit the timing.

Also, Jaedong > Flash. Too bad his team was less stable/rich than the rest of TBLS, otherwise he would have done better against Flash, especially near/at the end.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

What games are examples of this genre? I'm only familiar with things like turn-based 4Xs and such. Generally the real time stuff turns me off, though I started tooling around with Anno something or other and that seems to have some things in common with that, just not sure if it's the sort of game you're thinking of or not.

Dwarf Fortress, Rimworld, Space Haven, Songs of Syx, Amazing Cultivation Simulator, Gnomoria, Stonehearth, Noble Fates, The Spatials: Galactology, Rise to Ruins, etc.

Basically a game where you set goals and your little people do those things based on a priority system. You don't directly control them.

 

[Poseidon00]

This game killed the genre, because it was so good, you can't make a better rts anymore!

Spoiler

I was going to mention this.

An actual banger, worth a try.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

I tried playing the remaster of AoE1 the other day but the pathfinding was still shitassfuckbutt so I dropped it again.

It's kinda shocking, they touched everything but THE thing that needed fixing

 

[Johannes]

It's not "all about APM".

Even people with 400+ apm spam a lot of actions that inflates the number.

There are examples in starcraft broodwar where top pros had low apm, like Stork, who is one of the best players of all time. He had around 250 apm, and the average pro had over 400. He was still one of the best players.

Also to be that fast you need to know EXACTLY what you are doing the entire time, it's not just a muscle memory thing.

He plays protoss bro, you could be a really strong player (not Korean pro level but like top non Korean) with 130 apm back in the day.

The "strategy vs apm" debate is pretty funny like obviously in RTS at one point once the game is kinda "figured out" the best players are the guys with the best execution and multitasking micro/macro (especially in games like broodwar with oldschool UI) but in FPS like quake the best players are not necessilary the guys with the best aim or reflexes, it's the guys who have the best map control and memory. Ironically the shooter game often ends up being more "strategic" than the RTS game.

What does it mean that a game is "figured out"? It doesn't mean anyone can just simply check what the best strategies are, and then focus on the execution. No, it means that the top people are so good at understanding the strategy of the game, that it comes to really tiny nuances - not just differences in unit control, but ever developing better understanding of what to do when you see your opponent doing this or that.

"Figured out" means that there is no more new crazy build orders, guys know all the builds and spend literally their life practicing the execution over and over.
I think you vastly overestimates the "strategy" part. Yes obviously there are plenty of nuances but when you are managing multi-pronged attacks while keeping an efficient economy and keeping your minerals low it's more about how fast you can act than how deep you can think. And since your whole army can evaporate in 2s seconds if your micro slips it's a bit more complex than "i will outsmart my opponent and build unit X to counter unit Y."

There's no such thing as "knowing all the builds". You're constantly making decisions on limited info about which units to build, when to expand, to attack or retreat... There's no single right answers even in the more mapped out early game, you constantly have to think, you cannot act fast if you cannot think fast.


Of course the mechanics aren't easy and that limits what you can do, but that is part of the game and the strategy of it all. You can't separate the aspects of the game so cleanly.

 

[jackofshadows]

I follow them, but most of them don't hit that sweetspot for me. A lot of them either have no military component at all or some really shallow one, I want a game with lots of combat, RPG like unit experience and development, quests, etc.

You've played the shit out of Majesty, right?

 

[kinzadza]

It's not "all about APM".

Even people with 400+ apm spam a lot of actions that inflates the number.

There are examples in starcraft broodwar where top pros had low apm, like Stork, who is one of the best players of all time. He had around 250 apm, and the average pro had over 400. He was still one of the best players.

Also to be that fast you need to know EXACTLY what you are doing the entire time, it's not just a muscle memory thing.

It's hilarious when you autists think that 250APM (that's 4 per second) is low, in a fucking RTS out of all things.

it's slow when you look the average speed at the pro level, where ppl casually hit 500 apm.

Also, I still have 200 apm in sc2 and I'm an oldfag.

 

[Average Manatee]

I feel like more complex city sim elements just exacerbate skill differences. If you look at the he more casual RTSs like dawn of war they streamline the economy almost completely.

It's fine for single player of course

 

[-M-]

MOBA's took the competitive audience. City Builders took the casual. Everyone else is still playing Starcraft 2 (except for the mid-level pros who could never make it and jumped to AoE4).

It doesn't help that anytime a promising new RTS comes along the devs manage to shoot themselves in the foot. They Are Billions and AoE 4 being the prime examples. (Microsoft has been terrible stewards of that franchise IMO but that's another post entirely).

Meanwhile we're currently getting a bunch of hyped up RTS games that look like shit (Stormgate, Zero Space), which is doing the genre no favors.

 

[Lemming42]

Liked WarCraft and C&C as a kid but RTS games just kinda suck, nobody ever really did much to innovate on the core formula. C&C, WarCraft, StarCraft, Age of Empires, Dawn of War, and Company of Homos can all be won by just spamming units until you overwhelm the fuck out of the enemy force. "oh but what about the unique strengths and weaknesses of each unit?!!?!" they don't matter if you're spamming. In multiplayer, maybe, but every one of these single player campaigns can be won by just clicking Build Unit over and over again.

Doesn't help that, unlike so many other genres, a lot of the most irritating shit kept getting reiterated on rather than fixed or improved. Scanning the entire fog of war to track down the one enemy builder unit who got away from your assault on the main base and is now constructing a fucking chair or something somewhere in a corner of the map, wow, great fun.

The one I liked most was Myth, not because it was especially good but just because it was a mercy to have a game that didn't allow unit spamming. Same for those indoor missions in C&C and WarCraft.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

You've played the shit out of Majesty, right?

Majesty is Dwarf Fortress for people who only game for twenty minutes at a time. Great game, by the way.

 

[Damned Registrations]

You're constantly making decisions on limited info about which units to build, when to expand, to attack or retreat... There's no single right answers even in the more mapped out early game

This just isn't true. When you watch pros play the good casters can tell when the units will move out, how many and what they will be, minutes before it happens. And they play that way for good reason- varying even slightly (by say a single upgrade happening 30 seconds later or building 2 fewer units for defence) when the game is so tightly balanced and prone to snowballing is the difference between a stalemate and a total loss. You can't just not build enough banelings to break a wall down or build 2 more and send them a bit later when the enemy has 4 extra marines ready. You do the build, units smash together, and the result is predictable. Considering how often games end in ~15 minutes or less, having the first 5 be a foregone conclusion of what you're going to build and when, down to the fucking second, is really sad. At most this will get thrown off a tiny bit if someone rushes a reaper/adept over and kills some workers, but often even that is accounted for. At least in a chess game the opening is over quickly if you've both been there and done that.

Mid-late game can be more interesting with judgement calls on doing base trades and predicting where the enemy army is or will be, but that's the exception to the rule.

 

[Johannes]

You're constantly making decisions on limited info about which units to build, when to expand, to attack or retreat... There's no single right answers even in the more mapped out early game

This just isn't true. When you watch pros play the good casters can tell when the units will move out, how many and what they will be, minutes before it happens. And they play that way for good reason- varying even slightly (by say a single upgrade happening 30 seconds later or building 2 fewer units for defence) when the game is so tightly balanced and prone to snowballing is the difference between a stalemate and a total loss. You can't just not build enough banelings to break a wall down or build 2 more and send them a bit later when the enemy has 4 extra marines ready. You do the build, units smash together, and the result is predictable. Considering how often games end in ~15 minutes or less, having the first 5 be a foregone conclusion of what you're going to build and when, down to the fucking second, is really sad. At most this will get thrown off a tiny bit if someone rushes a reaper/adept over and kills some workers, but often even that is accounted for. At least in a chess game the opening is over quickly if you've both been there and done that.

Mid-late game can be more interesting with judgement calls on doing base trades and predicting where the enemy army is or will be, but that's the exception to the rule.

Total nonsense, there's always small alterations to the upgrade timings, amount of units built, etc. If there was just a single correct way to open, why would people bother scouting?

The opening in SC2 might be repetitive and/or boring, but there's always a scouting game of seeing as much as you can of what the opponent is doing, interpreting from that what you think he's doing, and deciding on a response.

 

[Damned Registrations]

If there was just a single correct way to open, why would people bother scouting?

It's not a single correct way, but a handful of them, and you scout to find out which one the opponent did. Though there have certainly been times when a particular opening for a given matchup was so dominant it wasn't even really necessary, aside from avoiding cheese.

Again, you can't alter these timings because it makes the entire build irrelevant. You need your relevant upgrade to happen before you reach the enemy base, and doing it any earlier than that means you didn't build as many units as you could have. In either case you effectively just lose right there. You can't upgrade your marines with stim after they're all dead. You may as well try adding ingredients to a lasagna after it's in the oven.

These people literally figure out what build the opponent is doing by looking at their gas production and checking the amount of gas left vs the clock. The only way that conceivably works is when the builds are incredibly predictable.

 

[Average Manatee]

You're constantly making decisions on limited info about which units to build, when to expand, to attack or retreat... There's no single right answers even in the more mapped out early game

This just isn't true. When you watch pros play the good casters can tell when the units will move out, how many and what they will be, minutes before it happens. And they play that way for good reason- varying even slightly (by say a single upgrade happening 30 seconds later or building 2 fewer units for defence) when the game is so tightly balanced and prone to snowballing is the difference between a stalemate and a total loss. You can't just not build enough banelings to break a wall down or build 2 more and send them a bit later when the enemy has 4 extra marines ready. You do the build, units smash together, and the result is predictable. Considering how often games end in ~15 minutes or less, having the first 5 be a foregone conclusion of what you're going to build and when, down to the fucking second, is really sad. At most this will get thrown off a tiny bit if someone rushes a reaper/adept over and kills some workers, but often even that is accounted for. At least in a chess game the opening is over quickly if you've both been there and done that.

Mid-late game can be more interesting with judgement calls on doing base trades and predicting where the enemy army is or will be, but that's the exception to the rule.

I will say that this is slightly a problem with SC2 having too good unit control and macro such that everything is optimized 100%. In SC1 the extra "randomness" inherent in units moving suboptimally and the extra APM required to do everything (which means that tons of things don't get done perfectly even by the best players) means that there is a lot of slack in exactly when you can do things or how much of something you can build.

You're still gonna do things like make a big attack as soon as you get +1 or +2 weapons or something but that could be slightly earlier or later depending on how you want to play it.

This is also why choke points and high elevation are such extreme defensive advantages in SC1, and make comebacks possible even with a build order that should outright lose to another.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

This kind of autist APM shit is exactly why the genre is dead. Don't nobody care about it minus a few million autists and South Korea.