Why did Real Time Strategy genre die out?

[Johannes]

The last few pages of this topic answer the OP question.
You are talking about shit that almost nobody cares about. And that's what happened with RTS in general.

No clue if you are talking about me since you didn't quote but whatever people are talking about is stupid shit. Heck, you are one of those uttering total nonsense:

I am talking about guys discussing APMs, macro, action, meta, skill etc.

People actually caring about the genre is what killed it, makes sense

 

[Anomander]

Do you really think most of the players care about that?

 

[Ol' Willy]

Because RTS is a bastard genre

RTS requires player to learn the set of effective strats and then employ them by his choice. From then on, there is little thinking involved, what matters is click-click-click, the speed at which player can implement these strats

This is why AZNs are so good at RTS tournaments, their autism allows them to be really efficient about it

But when talking about actual complexity of decision making and strategical approach, average TB strategy pisses all over average RTS

 

[Hydro]

Cinemafication of the game industry
Marvel/DC slurping retards
Decline of the ‘West’

 

[Johannes]

Do you really think most of the players care about that?

That's nothing to do with the genre. Most people are casuals in any genre.

Though a difference seems to be, a lot of clueless people too have hot takes about what RTS's are really about.

 

[Black]

Do you really think most of the players care about that?

That's nothing to do with the genre. Most people are casuals in any genre.

Though a difference seems to be, a lot of clueless people too have hot takes about what RTS's are really about.

RTS is about building cool, symmetrical bases with one building each.
RTS is about making bizarre unit compositions that'd make enemy AI blush.
RTS is about being told by surprisingly charismatic bald men to commit war crimes and gleefully doing so.
RTS is about having sick soundtracks that have no biness being that good.
RTS is about having cool as fuck cutscenes as a reward for beating missions.

RTS is NOT about apm, multiplayer or gookclicking.

 

[Nutmeg]

Because RTS is a bastard genre

RTS requires player to learn the set of effective strats and then employ them by his choice. From then on, there is little thinking involved, what matters is click-click-click, the speed at which player can implement these strats

This is why AZNs are so good at RTS tournaments, their autism allows them to be really efficient about it

But when talking about actual complexity of decision making and strategical approach, average TB strategy pisses all over average RTS

There are low APM RTS like the first CoH where as long as you can manage 40 APM you can win any match as long as you can *think* fast enough.

This is also one of the axes on which judge the quality of an RTS -- whether the bottleneck is APM or D(ecisions)PM.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Do you really think most of the players care about that?

That's nothing to do with the genre. Most people are casuals in any genre.

Though a difference seems to be, a lot of clueless people too have hot takes about what RTS's are really about.

RTS is about building cool, symmetrical bases with one building each.
RTS is about making bizarre unit compositions that'd make enemy AI blush.
RTS is about being told by surprisingly charismatic bald men to commit war crimes and gleefully doing so.
RTS is about having sick soundtracks that have no biness being that good.
RTS is about having cool as fuck cutscenes as a reward for beating missions.

RTS is NOT about apm, multiplayer or gookclicking.

Doomstacks or bust!

 

[Average Manatee]

Your physical ability to make actions is not the limiting factor in SC1 or any other RTS unless you are literally in the top 0.1% of players. Anyone who pretends it is shows that they have never played an RTS competently.

 

[Nutmeg]

Your physical ability to make actions is not the limiting factor in SC1 or any other RTS unless you are literally in the top 0.1% of players. Anyone who pretends it is shows that they have never played an RTS competently.

SC1 is a bad example because high action micro counts can far compensate for bad strategy giving rise to unfavorable engagements but generally yea.

 

[Lucumo]

Because RTS is a bastard genre

RTS requires player to learn the set of effective strats and then employ them by his choice. From then on, there is little thinking involved, what matters is click-click-click, the speed at which player can implement these strats

This is why AZNs are so good at RTS tournaments, their autism allows them to be really efficient about it

But when talking about actual complexity of decision making and strategical approach, average TB strategy pisses all over average RTS

There are low APM RTS like the first CoH where as long as you can manage 40 APM you can win any match as long as you can *think* fast enough.

This is also one of the axes on which judge the quality of an RTS -- whether the bottleneck is APM or D(ecisions)PM.

It's not really about fast thinking though, it's more about smart thinking, strategically and tactically. How to counter your opponent's strategy, his units and when to retreat your squads (holding out as long as necessary while avoiding a full wipe), when and where to push etc. It's about strategy, tactics and map awareness. And yeah, APM is very low on the priority list for that game.

Your physical ability to make actions is not the limiting factor in SC1 or any other RTS unless you are literally in the top 0.1% of players. Anyone who pretends it is shows that they have never played an RTS competently.

Basically, yeah. The better one is, the better one can use those APM effectively. As for the races, Zergs profit the most from increased (effective) APM, then Protoss and then Terrans.

 

[Average Manatee]

Your physical ability to make actions is not the limiting factor in SC1 or any other RTS unless you are literally in the top 0.1% of players. Anyone who pretends it is shows that they have never played an RTS competently.

SC1 is a bad example because high action micro counts can far compensate for bad strategy giving rise to unfavorable engagements but generally yea.

Only in absurdly rare cases of extremely high skill. Take JvZ for instance:

https://tl.net/blogs/538615-a-brief-look-into-jaedongs-best-match-up

Literally one player in the world who has (well, had) the micro to consistently overcome over players in a matchup that is otherwise basically a coinflip. Even the rest of the best players only manage a ~56% win rate, meaning the best micro they are capable of only gives them a 12% edge over their weaker opponents.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Look, this whole argument is pointless because:

1) Casuls don't play online.
2) Changing how online works for the sake of casuls is a waste of time, because casuls gonna casul even if you make it easier for them.
3) Dumbing down the mechanics doesn't change anything because online is hard because people make it hard. Cauls will still get creamed. The 1% of pros will still rise to the top nothing is gonna change except you now just made the game shittier.
4) The most popular online RTS games out there are among those who seem to favor the things people here are arguing are a negative and a bane for the sucess of the genre, things like APM, micro, and meta tactics. The argument that those are the things that are keeping the casuls at bay is refuted by how things have pan out in reality. The fact SC2 has such a big spectator scene shows that even if the casuls can't compete they'll still gladly watch the pros because skill expression entices people, as we see in the real world with sports.

My assumption right now is that if someone were to create a true spiritual successor to Starcraft it would be a massive hit, because Starcraft hit a formula that is popular with people and does not need to be changed. What's missing is a quality successor. All those retarded executives telling the developers they need to dumb down their games and make it easier for the casuls on the assumption it will lead to greater sales always seem to have another thing coming for them (and they always invariably never learn from their mistakes). Where is Relic now? They keep fucking up by releasing dumbed down sequels to their main franchises and they keep doing that despite the fact their efforts to "cater to a broader" audience have failed every time. Their most popular game is still CoH2. This magical "broader audience" didn't materialize.

The RTS genre doesn't need to be changed. It just needs good fucking games, and good games, for the most part, haven't been forthcoming. That is why people still cling to shit that is over 10 years old now.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Your physical ability to make actions is not the limiting factor in SC1 or any other RTS unless you are literally in the top 0.1% of players. Anyone who pretends it is shows that they have never played an RTS competently.

More like top 30%, maybe? Once you get to the point of knowing all the upkeep chores you should be doing constantly even exist, doing them fast enough to also have time to control an army or two is a fucking nightmare, and any added stress on top of that like moving workers away from harassment just goes way over the line. The average player cannot attack a base while moving workers away from a liberator while getting upgrades, moving workers from main to third, moving a scout, maintaining production without a queue, building more supply and reading enemy upgrades. Pretending that's just easy casual shit and the only difficulty is when someone is doing that while blinking 30 stalkers individually before they get shot is retarded.

If you're sitting around wondering what to do with your mouse idle, EVER, you're in the bottom 30% for sure. If your mouse is never idle, by definition, the limiting factor is your ability to make your thoughts happen- APM. At best you're arguing that that's due to not knowing technique (tricks with hotkeys and settings that make things require less physical clicking or mouse movement) as opposed to actual reflex and coordination, but that's a flimsy argument- the feeling you get while playing, of being frustrated you can't get your army/base to implement the strategy and tactics you thought of, is the same. It's the same reason people bounce off fighting games when they keep losing matches because they know that a dragon punch counters the jump kick (or slightly later, that you can interrupt a pressure string with it) that keeps eating their face, but they keep flubbing the input and eating shit. Losing because the game because your hands couldn't keep up with your brain feels bad because there's nothing to learn from the experience. There's no 'aha, next time I'll know how to beat that!' moment. There's just butthurt. Luckily, probably more than half the playerbase is blissfully unaware of why they even lose matches, blaming game balance, luck, or a bad build order when in reality their buildings had too much idle time letting their opponent effectively have a head start before crushing them with an overwhelmingly superior army.

It's not really about fast thinking though, it's more about smart thinking, strategically and tactically.

These things overlap. Whether you get there by coming up with 3 or 10 ideas you're taking the best of the lot, and both having better ideas on average and having more ideas help in the end. Again, Bullet Chess (Or speed chess in general) is the perfect example of a REAL TIME game about STRATEGY that isn't constrained by physical ability to implement your awareness or ideas. Card games are in the same space; plenty of them end up being won on time once the game state becomes complicated enough that you're struggling to think of the correct response in time, and responding quickly enough to beat the clock means being sloppy enough to lose on the board.

The most popular online RTS games

Are the most popular for reasons that have nothing to do with gameplay. Don't pretend Blizzard's trillion dollar marketing department and their cinematics aren't the thing that set them apart from the crowd. Starcraft isn't a rose you can 'by any other name'. It's a popular brand. People play it because their friends played it, they saw it first on a video or meme, their parents bought it for them, etc. AI Wars 2 and Offworld Trading Company (Excellent game btw, cool to see it mentioned) isn't an obscure indie title because it has bad mechanics. It's obscure because popularity and quality have nothing to do with each other in the space of video games.

The whole premise of the thread is retarded because it's assuming that the insane boom of RTS and Hack and Slash games following the success of Blizzard was the norm, and not some little industry bubble of everyone and their dog trying to chase the current trend. In that sense, the genre died because World of Warcraft came out, and investors started throwing money at MMOs instead, just like RTS and FPS before that and Fortnite, Dark Souls and Breath of the Wild clones since. FPS popped back up for a while at some point, maybe RTS will as well if some kind of blockbuster comes out, but I doubt it'll be soon, because AoE 4 should have been that game and it frankly shat the bed with bad management on launch regarding patching.

1) Casuls don't play online.

This is true (and many that are just play comp stomps with friends) but they learn about the game and become invested enough to hook in friends from the hardcore players that are terminally online. Nobody is going on forums to post in a 500 page thread about how good the cinematic was after mission 4 of the zerg campaign.

 

[Lucumo]

It's not really about fast thinking though, it's more about smart thinking, strategically and tactically.

These things overlap. Whether you get there by coming up with 3 or 10 ideas you're taking the best of the lot, and both having better ideas on average and having more ideas help in the end. Again, Bullet Chess (Or speed chess in general) is the perfect example of a REAL TIME game about STRATEGY that isn't constrained by physical ability to implement your awareness or ideas. Card games are in the same space; plenty of them end up being won on time once the game state becomes complicated enough that you're struggling to think of the correct response in time, and responding quickly enough to beat the clock means being sloppy enough to lose on the board.

What? There is only one perfect answer, tactically and strategically in CoH. Everything else is subpar. You go with your response which is dependent on your understanding of the game and the current situation in the match. If you are "coming up with 3 or 10 ideas", you will definitely lose, unless you are playing against an equally terrible player.
Also, bullet chess is definitely constrained by your physical ability to implement things. Pieces can easily get knocked around in real life which is distracting and/or can cause issues. Similarly, mouse slips can and do happen on the internet (I've seen it enough times).

By the way, don't you think it's funny that Average Manatee talks about BW and then you reply with shitty SC2? Lol.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Also, bullet chess is definitely constrained by your physical ability to implement things.

Fair enough, especially in real life. Point still stands for regular speedchess though.

You go with your response which is dependent on your understanding of the game and the current situation in the match.

Any game, especially one with imperfect information, is going to involve guesswork about what the opponent is going to do next. That means coming up with theories. If you just react to the first thing that comes to mind instead of ever second guessing yourself, you'll definitely lose to any deceptive behaviour.

By the way, don't you think it's funny that Average Manatee talks about BW and then you reply with shitty SC2? Lol.

Eh, BW was shitty too, just in a different way. Instead of spinning plates on the macro side any battle involving spellcasters became a test of who could find the pixel the fastest. I was speaking about RTS in general though. Way too much plate spinning across the board, even going back to the ones that started it, Dune 2 and Herzog Zwei, though I don't think it was intentional back then.

A good game is about making meaningful decisions, frequently. "Should I keep building units and researching important tech" is not a meaningful decision. The decision of which units to make might be, but it probably gets made like two or three times a match, if you're lucky. Often it's once, or not even that, because you made the decison before you even started and the match was over before you needed to adapt to anything.

 

[Lucumo]

Also, bullet chess is definitely constrained by your physical ability to implement things.

Fair enough, especially in real life. Point still stands for regular speedchess though.

You go with your response which is dependent on your understanding of the game and the current situation in the match.

Any game, especially one with imperfect information, is going to involve guesswork about what the opponent is going to do next. That means coming up with theories. If you just react to the first thing that comes to mind instead of ever second guessing yourself, you'll definitely lose to any deceptive behaviour.

By the way, don't you think it's funny that Average Manatee talks about BW and then you reply with shitty SC2? Lol.

Eh, BW was shitty too, just in a different way. Instead of spinning plates on the macro side any battle involving spellcasters became a test of who could find the pixel the fastest. I was speaking about RTS in general though. Way too much plate spinning across the board, even going back to the ones that started it, Dune 2 and Herzog Zwei, though I don't think it was intentional back then.

A good game is about making meaningful decisions, frequently. "Should I keep building units and researching important tech" is not a meaningful decision. The decision of which units to make might be, but it probably gets made like two or three times a match, if you're lucky. Often it's once, or not even that, because you made the decison before you even started and the match was over before you needed to adapt to anything.

The (extremely) quick variants are generally their own thing. They favor players who play the position rather than those preferring to play their opponent. It's also heavily in favor of those who can quickly assess the game state. A lot of that can be made up by (excessive) repetition aka playing tons and tons of games and analyzing them, so that you can memorize positions and how they are solved in the most optimal manner. But, of course, in the end it's just making up for lacking the specific skills which are necessary in those formats.
It's not really about strategy here but understanding the situation of the game. Sure, you go with one in the beginning but it's only really for that (and applies more to White anyway), as it soon is all about the board state. There is also no tactics involved (unless we are talking about beginner level here), as Chess simply isn't that deep/that kind of game.

What you say makes no sense, especially if you look at what I wrote where the response is dependent on the current situation in the match. Not to mention that I talk about CoH while you suddenly take that and apply it to every other RTS game. But sure, it does apply elsewhere too. And that means that "...you'll definitely lose to any deceptive behavior." has no ground to stand on. Do you know what "current situation in the match" means? Sure, you don't have perfect information but you try to have perfect information and are pretty close to that. That's why you scout, calculate the opponent's resources in your head. It's how hidden expansions are found, or cheese etc. I can tell that you have no clue about proper competitive gaming because second-guessing yourself is something you never do because you know at all times, based on the current situation, what to do. That means you don't do any "guesswork" either. Any "guesswork" involved is part of the strategy and may be meta-knowledge because you know the opponent does X (like bunker rushing) very often.

I have no clue about what you mean with "plate spinning" and everything else you write there doesn't make any sense either.

What? When to stop building units and start researching tech instead is an absolutely meaningful decision. If could mean that you win or lose the game. The decision is based on the current state of the game. If you don't have enough units, the opponent might break through and crush you. Heck, you could fake research and build up troops instead to then overwhelm the opponent when he thought he was safe to research as well. You make meaningful decisions all the time.

 

[Zoo]

Too simple to learn, too difficult to master. Mastery also requires a bugman fixation on efficiency and time at the cost of aesthetics and long-term planning. Pure utilitarianism.

Professional hopefuls went to mobas where the amount of micro is far less than the requisite for competitive RTS play, casuals went to grand strategy as they grew older, which offers superior system complexity and more importantly persistent maps/campaigns. RTS continually dropped the ball on the latter two points. Stronghold was absolutely a step in the right direction, still too simple but it was the early 2000s. The scope was still too small and the maps were microscopic. If anyone ever played multiplayer, you barely had the room for two players to squeeze in two castles. From each set of walls your archers would be within firing range of each other, it was pretty comical. Nothing was stopping Firefly from taking the concept and building on it, adding more and more depth and building types to the castle sim, but they never did. They've been content to release practically the same game as in Y2K over and over again.

Fast forward to the mid-late 2000s, take something like BFME II. EA went to the trouble to make huge campaign scenarios with maps that actually give the player room to breath, so you get to work building your perfect dwarven fortress incorporating the terrain into the design. You beat the hell out of your opponent. Later on you're attacked again in the same county, the awesome castle you built is fucking gone because no persistence. You promptly abandon the RTS genre and play nothing until CKII released. Sure you lose out on the set piece keep-storming and rides of the Rohirrim, but the complexity you gain more than makes up for it.

Halo Wars and BFME were great. The genre is being actively suppressed. Also, the point about APM being a dexterity test and not a strategy test is correct. If anything, 4X games should be called "real time strategy games" and Starcraft 1v1 would be "skirmish games." Shit, Fallout Tactics probably has more "strategy" than most RTS titles

Halo Wars was a dumbed down RTS with abysmal pathfinding. It wasn't unfun, it had possibilities, but they were supressed.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Are the most popular for reasons that have nothing to do with gameplay. Don't pretend Blizzard's trillion dollar marketing department and their cinematics aren't the thing that set them apart from the crowd. Starcraft isn't a rose you can 'by any other name'. It's a popular brand. People play it because their friends played it, they saw it first on a video or meme, their parents bought it for them, etc. AI Wars 2 and Offworld Trading Company (Excellent game btw, cool to see it mentioned) isn't an obscure indie title because it has bad mechanics. It's obscure because popularity and quality have nothing to do with each other in the space of video games.

Complete, total, unadulterated bullshit.

Starcraft (the first one) is a perfect masterpiece. It's the RTS equivalent of Doom. SC2 isn't anywhere near as good but since it recycled most of the first game it's still basically just Starcraft ported on a new engine (the engine, btw, being pretty good all things considered).

Stacraft 1 is one of the few near 10/10 games of its category i can think of. Visual design, perfect. Sound design, perfect. Asymetrical races in an RTS, perfect. Just like Doom, it is among the absolute pinnacles of production design, which is paramount for a game where you are supposed to be spending hundreds if not thousands of hours. Jank is simply unacceptable at this level and i think SC2 did a lot to undermine the "brand" with it's half-assed elements. The game is still popular but... people noticed, and the genre lost momentum because of it.

 

[Ol' Willy]

Again, Bullet Chess (Or speed chess in general) is the perfect example of a REAL TIME game about STRATEGY that isn't constrained by physical ability to implement your awareness or ideas.

Not really, though. Bullet vs normal chess actually confirms the inferiority of RTS in that department

The players who specialize on bullet chess develop their own specific sets of debuts and development plans, and when they try to use them in normal chess or even blitz they usually get wrecked

 

[Johannes]

Again, Bullet Chess (Or speed chess in general) is the perfect example of a REAL TIME game about STRATEGY that isn't constrained by physical ability to implement your awareness or ideas.

Not really, though. Bullet vs normal chess actually confirms the inferiority of RTS in that department

The players who specialize on bullet chess develop their own specific sets of debuts and development plans, and when they try to use them in normal chess or even blitz they usually get wrecked

And what exactly is that supposed to prove? Of course people will adapt to the ruleset they play in, doesn't mean one or the other is intrinsically inferior or superior. And different RTS are differently paced too, and you're free to pick the one to your liking.

 

[Ol' Willy]

And what exactly is that supposed to prove? Of course people will adapt to the ruleset they play in, doesn't mean one or the other is intrinsically inferior or superior. And different RTS are differently paced too, and you're free to pick the one to your liking.

Time constraints severely limit the ability for far reaching game plans in favor of quicker and immediate solutions

There is a reason why most bullet chess games are not even worthy of detailed analysis

 

[Ol' Willy]

There are low APM RTS like the first CoH where as long as you can manage 40 APM you can win any match as long as you can *think* fast enough.

40 APM is still like one action every 1.5 seconds

 

[Lyric Suite]

Bullet chess is not real time anything. RTS is half action, half strategy. The only point of comparison would be if moving chess pieces on a board would also involve manual dexterity of some kind.

 

[Multidirectional]

Your physical ability to make actions is not the limiting factor in SC1 or any other RTS unless you are literally in the top 0.1% of players. Anyone who pretends it is shows that they have never played an RTS competently.

It is ALWAYS a limiting factor, no matter how good a player is. These games are about prioritizing what you will be doing at any given moment, if two players are similar speed the one with smarter priorities and better choice of strategy wins. Games like SC1 or 2 and can never be played perfectly by any human and to me that's part of the beauty. You need embrace the messiness of it and I'm sure that's really hard for autists hence the butthurt.