It's all nice and might explain multi-player centered RTS. Except that in the 90s (and sometimes even later) RTS were often about single player. What you describe doesn't explain disappearance of single player RTSs.Mobas (and more/better rts alternatives) happened.
I am a old rts player, i played the ancient starcraft ladder, i raped as the talebans in C&C generals, i was one of those guy stomping in warcraft 3 for years, but then i started dota and now i will likely never truly play a actual rts ever again.
Guess what, the moba gameplay was what i really wanted from rts.
Fuck building a base, fuck controlling dozens of minions managing sparse skills , fuck having to hotkey rotate x locations at infinitum.
That's just stupid manual menial stuff.
My take on it - and it won't be popular: It's an inherently limited genre* that never evolved into anything interesting (in single player). Here I said it. Now to survive the storm...
I'd not agree with RTSes being "stupid manual menial stuff" since there's quite a lot of beauty to a game of SC, CoH, C&C, WC2/3 or DoW, but I do figure that for the most part, learning to play an RTS online is like learning how to play an instrument - you sit down and you have no clue what to do, and the first recommended course of action isn't "Sit there and play the same sonata with a lot of mistakes until you get it right", it's "Get used to the instrument, get comfortable with your sitting posture and figure out some of the most basic notes". There's as much emphasis on "real-time" as there is on "strategy", arguably more so on the former part. And there's really no way of making the "strategy" part more important because, ultimately, you will either deliver a game that is shallow mechanically by simply causing the "strategizing" to not go beyond rock-paper-scissors, or your game will still be mastered by the dedicated few that will maximize their mechanical efficiency.
My take on it - and it won't be popular: It's an inherently limited genre* that never evolved into anything interesting (in single player). Here I said it. Now to survive the storm...
This is actually very true, rts core gameplay never improved in anything over the last 15 years or so, not even in the technical side.
Holy shit, stacraft is from 1998, when gta was still 2d
I'd not agree with RTSes being "stupid manual menial stuff" since there's quite a lot of beauty to a game of SC, CoH, C&C, WC2/3 or DoW, but I do figure that for the most part, learning to play an RTS online is like learning how to play an instrument - you sit down and you have no clue what to do, and the first recommended course of action isn't "Sit there and play the same sonata with a lot of mistakes until you get it right", it's "Get used to the instrument, get comfortable with your sitting posture and figure out some of the most basic notes". There's as much emphasis on "real-time" as there is on "strategy", arguably more so on the former part. And there's really no way of making the "strategy" part more important because, ultimately, you will either deliver a game that is shallow mechanically by simply causing the "strategizing" to not go beyond rock-paper-scissors, or your game will still be mastered by the dedicated few that will maximize their mechanical efficiency.
Is not about learning, is about the lack of fun and manual overload/rendundancy for little gain.
Like you said, there is little to no "strategy" for a seasoned rts player, is all about the easy paper/rock/scission meta and the actual "skill" is only how fast fingers and hotkey managment are.
It wouldn't be true though, there's always Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance.My take on it - and it won't be popular: It's an inherently limited genre* that never evolved into anything interesting (in single player). Here I said it. Now to survive the storm...
This is actually very true, rts core gameplay never improved in anything over the last 15 years or so, not even in the technical side.
Holy shit, stacraft is from 1998, when gta was still 2d
I'd not agree with RTSes being "stupid manual menial stuff" since there's quite a lot of beauty to a game of SC, CoH, C&C, WC2/3 or DoW, but I do figure that for the most part, learning to play an RTS online is like learning how to play an instrument - you sit down and you have no clue what to do, and the first recommended course of action isn't "Sit there and play the same sonata with a lot of mistakes until you get it right", it's "Get used to the instrument, get comfortable with your sitting posture and figure out some of the most basic notes". There's as much emphasis on "real-time" as there is on "strategy", arguably more so on the former part. And there's really no way of making the "strategy" part more important because, ultimately, you will either deliver a game that is shallow mechanically by simply causing the "strategizing" to not go beyond rock-paper-scissors, or your game will still be mastered by the dedicated few that will maximize their mechanical efficiency.
Is not about learning, is about the lack of fun and manual overload/rendundancy for little gain.
Like you said, there is little to no "strategy" for a seasoned rts player, is all about the easy paper/rock/scission meta and the actual "skill" is only how fast fingers and hotkey managment are.
Another way to say this, I think, is once you've played one RTS, you've played them all.
I've seen plenty of examples of really good players that were on the lower-APM side and utterly crushed with better understanding of the matchup and I've seen players who had been really fast and still didn't have much success. You gotta strike a "golden balance" and I'd still argue that after a certain APM ceiling you really ought to make up for it with some brains.Like you said, there is little to no "strategy" for a seasoned rts player, is all about the easy paper/rock/scission meta and the actual "skill" is only how fast fingers and hotkey managment are.
Eh, that could be applied to genres like 4X, TBS and FPS as well, and for those genres people still clamor to games from 1998 even if there have been decent games released in between. There are some unavoidable trappings, but I still think there's a lot of difference between a Blizzard and a Relic RTS. For instance, I still wish we had a proper successor game building up on the concepts from Warcraft 3.Another way to say this, I think, is once you've played one RTS, you've played them all.
I've seen plenty of examples of really good players that were on the lower-APM side
It's all nice and might explain multi-player centered RTS. Except that in the 90s (and sometimes even later) RTS were often about single player. What you describe doesn't explain disappearance of single player RTSs.
Testie was a Random player who delivered wins from Korean players like Stork while playing at like 100 APM. White-Ra is an Ukrainian dad in his late thirties who still plays very solidly and maintains a solid MMR on whichever server he plays on (he was A on ICCup before the Remaster hit). There are even Korean players with very "clean" playstyles who basically never spam and never have any clutter, and their games are very crisp to look at from an FPVOD, like Soulkey.I've seen plenty of examples of really good players that were on the lower-APM side
No, you don't.
What's your metric of an "average player"? The kinda player who is into 1v1 melee? A BGHer? A compstomper? Someone who only plays campaigns? Your typical pro is literally only "10 times faster" than someone who plays Starcraft at like 40 APM, which is basically "I am utterly unused to the interface and I don't know where everything is; I spend more time checking out tooltips on stuff than playing". That's like comparing Fatal1ty to someone who plays Quake 3 with arrow keys and has "Fire!" on Left Control.Those guys are still 10 times faster than the average player.
Given that the most popular current playstyles are heavily oriented around setting up a strong economy and taking over the whole map I'd say it's patently not true. Mostly because many of the rush builds are all-in, and aggro builds in general lend themselves to a weaker economy, so if you do not weaken the enemy's economy properly, you kinda waste a lot of money. In particular, Terran vs Terran is a very slow, methodical matchup. You could defintely turn the argument to the other game, e.g. by arguing that you can just pick the Aztecs, Mayans or Celts every time to Dark-rush people.I never liked Starcraft because that game is all about rush-rush-rush
And, likewise, there's a huge-ass difference between Proxy 2 Gateways, a regular 2 Gate Zealot Rush, a +1 Speedlot Timing Attack or just sitting on 3-4 Nexii and massing up a huge army in peace. Notably, the only tactic among those that doesn't ultimately try to get back on the rails and secure a fairly regular mid-game (and consequently, late game) is the Proxy Gateways (where you basically build your main production close to your enemy so that he can get attacked faster and your rush can be reinforced quicker, leaving you entirely defenseless to runbys and if you lose the rush, the counterattack will kill ya).Then comes the fork in the road. Some people attack in Feudal, some in Castle, others in Imperial.
I mean, *just based off of this sentence* I honestly do not see where AoE differs here from Starcraft. Or any other game in the genre. Those are some of the most basic trappings of RTS - people build bases, they gather resources (in some endlessly colourful ways; Dune 2 and C&C had the Harvester, Warcraft had mines and lumber, Starcraft inverted the Warcraft mechanic by making "lumber" the basic core resource and "gold" the "advanced, precious" one, DoW (and most Relic RTSes) has that requisition thing and zone control). It honestly just subscribes to the notion that people expressed here that the RTS genre generally is kinda sameish. I can tell you of plenty anecdotal SC games where "everyone was teched and built up and it became a game of resource management and real tactical combat". Once again, Terran vs Terran in Brood War favors the player who picks his engagements supercarefully; each game lasts 50 minutes.The last phase is when everyone (or rather those who still survived any prior attacks) is teched and built up and it becomes a game of resource management and real tactical combat.
Citation needed; I never had a game of AoE that lasted over an hour if I wasn't shooting the shit with a group of friends in a huge vs AI compstomp. "Long" games, in any RTS I've played, were generally constrained to like 50 minutes tops.The problem is, a typical game of AoE will last over an hour.
I think that's highly subjective. I disinctly recall having to learn build orders to have a chance in either an AoE1 or 2 lobby; if your game is followed by enough enthusiasts, they *are* going to come up with strats that are more optimal than others. The "rote" nature of actions in Starcraft isn't any more false or true here - Starcraft build orders do not go up to 100 supply, they are generally guidelines for the first 5-6 minutes of the game, and even they allow for some leeway or personal adjustments.was the beginning of that rot of faster, more mindless gameplay that focused on rote actions rather than actual decisions and strategy
That is why RTS died, I think. People lost the ability to focus and think for long periods of time, too caught up with the 140 characters of Twatter and the instant gratification of Farcebook and Instagrunt.
I stopped reading there and deleted the reply I was writing.Citation needed;The problem is, a typical game of AoE will last over an hour.
Heck, best example of this is that it used to be a big deal that Command & Conquer had so many FMVs. Like, back in the day Westwood and EA hyped the fact they had hired Michael Dorn to play the Atreides duke for the cutscenes in Emperor: Battle For Dune.It's all nice and might explain multi-player centered RTS. Except that in the 90s (and sometimes even later) RTS were often about single player. What you describe doesn't explain disappearance of single player RTSs.
This is probably a minor factor overall, but one thing about single-player RTSes is that, in their heyday, they were the only genre capable of delivering and visualizing stories on an epic scale, stories about armies and wars and global conflict. First person shooters and other "ego-focused" genres weren't capable of that yet.
Citation needed? PLAY. THE. GAME.
Do you mostly host huge, in-house team games with friends? Because I used to do that a lot for many RTS games I've played and those generally last a longer time, especially if the participants prefer to turtle behind static defense or set up a "no rush rule". In that case, I'd not be surprised if your games of AoE2 took over an hour, because I played in a ton of Starcraft games where everyone turtled and had massive Battlecruiser and Carrier battles with lots of spellcasters and crazy high-scale stuff going on, or games of DoW that ended with massing Baneblades, but nowhere do I see that it's an actual norm.(which, ironically, makes me the first target that my friends in the opposing team try to eliminate right from the start, but that is another story).
Heck, best example of this is that it used to be a big deal that Command & Conquer had so many FMVs. Like, back in the day Westwood and EA hyped the fact they had hired Michael Dorn to play the Atreides duke for the cutscenes in Emperor: Battle For Dune.
Nowadays this sort of thing is largely extinct and essentially turned into a meme of itself in the latter day Command & Conquer games.
If you are not playing AoE with friends, what are you playing it for? The campaign?Citation needed? PLAY. THE. GAME.
But... but I did. Numerous times. I played AoE2 quite a bit on its release (EDIT: actually, not on its release, but a couple years later, but the game was still huge at the time among a few of my schoolmates, so I always felt like it was a while ago), and I alluded to my experiences with the game in my post. I came up with actual gameplay examples I could think of. As I'm not well-versed in high-level AoE2 gameplay nowadays, I even looked up ZeroEmpires (reportedly an AoE2 guru)'s channel to see what kind of games he posts, and they generally last like 30-50 minutes; not much material that lasts "over an hour", if any at all.
But now that I think of it - out of sheer respect for what you posted and making sure I didn't miss something crucial - I'm sorry, but I have to wonder:
Do you mostly host huge, in-house team games with friends? Because I used to do that a lot for many RTS games I've played and those generally last a longer time, especially if the participants prefer to turtle behind static defense or set up a "no rush rule". In that case, I'd not be surprised if your games of AoE2 took over an hour, because I played in a ton of Starcraft games where everyone turtled and had massive Battlecruiser and Carrier battles with lots of spellcasters and crazy high-scale stuff going on, or games of DoW that ended with massing Baneblades, but nowhere do I see that it's an actual norm.(which, ironically, makes me the first target that my friends in the opposing team try to eliminate right from the start, but that is another story).
Random people in an online lobby that I can compete against and perhaps socialize with afterwards if I had a good match?If you are not playing AoE with friends, what are you playing it for? The campaign?
The norm is still 1v1 modes or smaller-scale team games for these kinda games. It's hard as fuck to host a 4v4 sometimes; servers on those old games often shit themselves with 8 people, and the latency goes rampant.I have played massive 4 humans vs 4 humans games
Vs AI games are usually grindfests that take a long time but after a while they become an exercise in cleaning up the AI that ran out of resources, steam, and isn't particularly smart at mounting an attack. They're really fun, but I dunno how much they can be utilized as a metric of what a "standard" game of AoE should be.or 2 humans and 1 AI vs 5 AI on the hardest possible mode and any number of types in between.
Well, okay. Never have I ever accused you of not having played enough Starcraft or anything of the sort when attempting to engage with your perceptions on the online gameplay in that title that were much, much different from mine.We were still playing the game up until 2009. I'd say your "numerous times" is a piddle in a pond in comparison.
WRONG!The norm is still 1v1 modes or smaller-scale team games for these kinda games. It's hard as fuck to host a 4v4 sometimes; servers on those old games often shit themselves with 8 people, and the latency goes rampant.
If you insist, but I think you might be in a minority when saying that, particularly when stating outright that the RTS genre died because, basically, it was overtaken by games that require a much lesser time expenditure (which, honestly, I don't think is true, and I provided examples to the contrary) due to people generally becoming dumber, which... just isn't an useful statement (mostly because it's very biased and emotional) to make when gauging this phenomenon. You also insist that only 8 player modes have any legitimacy, which I think is a reductionist attitude because that essentially implies that a 2v2 or 3v3 brawl between highly competent players is worthless compared to a 3v5 slugfest against the AI where - as much fun as the mode is - the outcome is generally preordained when the players have the know-how and there's plenty of cheese techniques to fool the AI, like in pretty much every game.You haven't played the game.
I never denied that it takes considerable skill to play in such an environment. But I don't think that it denies legitimacy from the other game modes that are available. I also don't think that the complexity of the game mode means that you can't systematize and standardize certain things, like you could in any other game. There's a shitton of complexity left in Blizzard RTSes as well, and a meta game for any game mode you can think of, but I will still be the first to admit that even if the meta evolves a fair bit even today (through certain adjustments and ideas), it's still mostly set in stone.the 4 vs 4 is a REAL game of strategy and tactics, particularly when you have a range of expertise in both teams.