Whatever happened to the RTS genre? (video)

[ArchAngel]

Maybe you got a huge nick but you surly got low IQ.

 

[Quatlo]

mfw too smart for more than 20 apm

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Maybe you got a huge nick but you surly got low IQ.

Has your high IQ figured out how to use a spell checker yet?

 

[ArchAngel]

Maybe you got a huge nick but you surly got low IQ.

Has your high IQ figured out how to use a spell checker yet?

Has your low IQ figured out how to get APM higher than your IQ?

 

[thesheeep]

 

[Jaedar]

Even the Single Player aspect can use some fresh ideas.

One thing I love in RTS campaigns is when the campaign is not just a bunch of maps tied together, but you actually have a continuity of sorts. Warzone 2100 and Earth 2150 had persistent bases, resources and armies. WC3 had campaign heroes and their items as carry-over, althrough you were limited in levelling, a good player could get their campaign heroes more powerful than someone who wans't good, through exploration and such. Outpost 2 had Research and Population carrying over.

Starcraft 2 has persistent unit upgrades and such, for a more recent example. It also occasionally allows for taking on missions in different order, unlocking units in a different order.

Imo, the strategy part of rts tends to suffer today. Fairly similarly to deckbuilding in ccgs(as someone else pointed out): A lot of it has been solved by people way better than you. You might still make small corrections as you play, and you need to figure out what your opponent is going for (but even this often comes down to a fairly simple: see X -> assume Y and play Z). If you look at stuff like starcraft2, especially even if you produce one perfect counter unit, it means nothing if your opponent has a dozen of the unit it counters. Strategy barely enters until you are dexterous enough to do things fast enough so you don't fall behind in the economy.

Solutions though? Don't have any. Perhaps more dynamic games, where players have to react to various random elements (think board games, and the usual random decks of event cards and the like)? Hardcore crowd would hate it though.

 

[Deflowerer]

RTS is also at disadvantage because you cannot walk away and drink some tea. Turn Based sure, take your time. MOBAs and CS matches are quite fast, RTS match - no, you cannot take break in a middle of, often very long, matches.

Most openRA games I've seen shoutcasted rarely go over 40 minutes and are mostly 20-30 minute affairs. I think it's a bit of a myth that RTS MP matches last that long.

 

[CptMace]

RTS subgenres are just more fun with pretty much the same gameplay.
The classic base-building rts is almost an anomaly nowadays. SC2 managed to sell thanks to the mix between Blizzard brand, e-sport professionalisation and sheer nostalgia.
There hasn't been a single successful classic base-building rts for a damn long time, really.
I was among those who applauded Relic for the turn they took with Dawn of War II, giving their game a tactic-focused spin, getting rid of the typical recipe, and realised back then that I just wasn't into these games anymore.
My all-time favourite, like most people I suspect, is the first RTS I really played, which happens to be Tiberian Sun. Retrospectively, there's nothing really exciting about Tiberian Sun, it's a typical RTS with two factions who play relatively differently. The only RTS that hyped me besides this one was WC3, because its single player campaign - like SC1 as I would discover years later - was a fucking marvel. So much love put into these single players missions, which pretty much all had their own gimmick in terms of objectives or scenario, still amazes me.

Now it's derailled into subgenres, dota-like obviously, but although weird shit like They Are Billions, a early-access game which could be summarized as a survival/rts. Plays, from I've seen, exactly like any base-building rts, but here the twist is on the objective.
Really makes you consider why these games are still around, as it seems so damn fucking hard to find a variant in gameplay or in the rules that make it interesting again. I'll stand my claim, the typical rts is either plain boring or feels like busy work.

 

[Deflowerer]

Imo, the strategy part of rts tends to suffer today. Fairly similarly to deckbuilding in ccgs(as someone else pointed out): A lot of it has been solved by people way better than you. You might still make small corrections as you play, and you need to figure out what your opponent is going for (but even this often comes down to a fairly simple: see X -> assume Y and play Z). If you look at stuff like starcraft2, especially even if you produce one perfect counter unit, it means nothing if your opponent has a dozen of the unit it counters. Strategy barely enters until you are dexterous enough to do things fast enough so you don't fall behind in the economy.

Solutions though? Don't have any. Perhaps more dynamic games, where players have to react to various random elements (think board games, and the usual random decks of event cards and the like)? Hardcore crowd would hate it though.

I think you're coming from a pleb perspective if you think this so called "solving" has led to suffering of strategy. By that account, modern military conflict is "solved".

 

[Jaedar]

Imo, the strategy part of rts tends to suffer today. Fairly similarly to deckbuilding in ccgs(as someone else pointed out): A lot of it has been solved by people way better than you. You might still make small corrections as you play, and you need to figure out what your opponent is going for (but even this often comes down to a fairly simple: see X -> assume Y and play Z). If you look at stuff like starcraft2, especially even if you produce one perfect counter unit, it means nothing if your opponent has a dozen of the unit it counters. Strategy barely enters until you are dexterous enough to do things fast enough so you don't fall behind in the economy.

Solutions though? Don't have any. Perhaps more dynamic games, where players have to react to various random elements (think board games, and the usual random decks of event cards and the like)? Hardcore crowd would hate it though.

I think you're coming from a pleb perspective if you think this so called "solving" has led to suffering of strategy.

It certainly leads to the strategy suffering: if you try and come up with your own solution it will almost certainly be inferior to someone who just looked up the answer online, and he'll spend the time to improve on the execution, so you'll be behind in both the strategy and the execution.

When the solution is so readily copied, you're either among the best in the world or it's not worth bothering with (you can still find it fun of course, but it is a self imposed limitation, and presumably you'll get bored of losing because of it at some point).

 

[Deflowerer]

Mind you, I only follow openRA matches these days, but I can't really believe that there is THE optimal solution to everything that just boils down to faster APM in majority of modern RTSes.

 

[Dzupakazul]

It certainly leads to the strategy suffering: if you try and come up with your own solution it will almost certainly be inferior to someone who just looked up the answer online, and he'll spend the time to improve on the execution, so you'll be behind in both the strategy and the execution.

But this is also the case for turn-based games, even. I can probably write you down a step-by-step guide on winning the highest difficulty level game in most games like Civilization, Heroes of Might & Magic, GalCiv2, etc. and you will still win by just following these steps - even if there are some variables you have to take into account, they're still really minor and don't affect your game plan by that much, your core research and developmental benchmarks are often the same from game to game. How many times have you played a game of Civilization where you knew your game-winner was to beeline the same tech as the last game?

Even chess does the same thing. You can figure out everything by yourself by just using the general opening principles (controlling the center and developing pieces)... or, like actual chess professionals, you can study the various openings and defenses and games many, many moves in advance. I'm fairly certain Magnus Carlsen can be 20 moves into a Berlin Defence game and he will still be like "Oh yeah, I remember this one from the game Topalov and Anand played when I was still playing with LEGOs, the correct move here is ...Bd7", and a lot of it will come from his training and being able to recall board positions extremely meticulously.

 

[ArchAngel]

Imo, the strategy part of rts tends to suffer today. Fairly similarly to deckbuilding in ccgs(as someone else pointed out): A lot of it has been solved by people way better than you. You might still make small corrections as you play, and you need to figure out what your opponent is going for (but even this often comes down to a fairly simple: see X -> assume Y and play Z). If you look at stuff like starcraft2, especially even if you produce one perfect counter unit, it means nothing if your opponent has a dozen of the unit it counters. Strategy barely enters until you are dexterous enough to do things fast enough so you don't fall behind in the economy.

Solutions though? Don't have any. Perhaps more dynamic games, where players have to react to various random elements (think board games, and the usual random decks of event cards and the like)? Hardcore crowd would hate it though.

I think you're coming from a pleb perspective if you think this so called "solving" has led to suffering of strategy.

It certainly leads to the strategy suffering: if you try and come up with your own solution it will almost certainly be inferior to someone who just looked up the answer online, and he'll spend the time to improve on the execution, so you'll be behind in both the strategy and the execution.

When the solution is so readily copied, you're either among the best in the world or it's not worth bothering with (you can still find it fun of course, but it is a self imposed limitation, and presumably you'll get bored of losing because of it at some point).

This is completely untrue, at least for sc2. Best players use strategies that usually only work for them and few good enough players. Noobs that try to copy these "best" strategies usually fail and get destroyed.

Sc2 is full of strategies that work on different level of player. But, yea it asks you to become at least proficient at the game.. like any other sport. Do you get your fat ass out on a football field and then complain that you cannot score goals because everyone else outruns you?

 

[Darth Roxor]

just spam warp spiders

 

[HeatEXTEND]

SC2 managed to sell because BW was the absolute shit

and ruined a perfectly good thing.

SC2 ruined RTS

 

[CptMace]

SC2 didn't ruin anything. There was already nothing to ruin left. That was my point.
Maybe you meant to say that it was far to save RTS, then yeah, definitely agree.

 

[Multidirectional]

SCII is great fun, dunno what you people are bitching about. At least playing Zerg is.

 

[Space Satan]

As a matter of fact MOBAs make entry to the RTS genre extremely difficult. Because MOBAs kill multitasking outright. I, now, try to return to Red Alert 3 and Kane's Wrath online gaming and my multitasking skills have been reduced to, effectively, nothing. When playing RTS, like starcraft and others I had no problem managing drops and base building and army movement, but now i barely can coordinate my main attack or drop. So it is easy to transition from RTS to MOBA but it is very hard to go from MOBA to RTS. Hense low player influx.