What happened to the RTS genre?

[Deleted]

RTS is StarCraft2 ..../END
All prior WC3/Warhammer players etc switched to SC2, when it was released.

[Djuntas]

RTS is StarCraft2 ..../END
All prior WC3/Warhammer players etc switched to SC2, when it was released.

Sure, but still sad that SC2 is the only game. I played abit off SC1 along with red alert and Warcraft 2, when I was a kid. Later AOE2 aswell - All great games that should have had some take on SC2 even today imo.

...Anywho AOE2 is still very much alive.

[Deleted]

Total Annihilation was an awesome game back in the day , I got a new patch , well new to me patch for it to make it into TA escalation I think its called . Its quite a good game for a change if your just sort of looking around for a game that will lift the boredom for a while

[Verdugo]

I blame dota and its clones.

[Venziir]

I blame dota and its clones.

I fully agree with the, usually overly negative, Tzeentch sorceror!

[Achaman]

The latest Age of Empires and Civ 5 was pretty brilliant, dunno about the OP.

civ 5 is turn based which isnt really the same as age of empires and the latest would either be the online disaster or the remake which i wouldnt call a new game

[Yunru]

Iirc, multiplayer in Generals was shitty, everyone played red alert instead (at least in my city), but even play RA2 now, it's all dumbs down to making 100 Kirovs and shitting on everything. It was fun back then, but now it's just ""meh"+nostalgia"

I don't like how people declare whole genre as "dying out" while there is SC2 with huge fanbase and multiplayer support AND bunch of new RTS games released every year. Just like spoiled kids.

Why only 100?

[Achaman]

RTS is StarCraft2 ..../END
All prior WC3/Warhammer players etc switched to SC2, when it was released.

sc2 is build up your base fast or get overwhelmed i dont like being forced to rush its stupid and it kinda makes the graphics pointless as your too busy collecting resources or scouting your opponent to give a shit wether something is slightly more/less pixelated than something that came out 10 years ago

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What about XCOM?

xcom reminds me of socom or graw a shooter with tactical strategy or something having to issue commands to your teammated to go to x cover and kill y enemy

plus its turn based

i miss games like aoe/aom rise of nations c&c (latest are complete shit)

oh and 90% of them endup with some shitty unit/population limit and endup having to rely on some smart modder or hack to increase it

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Sins of a solar empire (& sins rebellion) are pretty good. The total war series is still going strong as well if you are into turn based strategy games too.
Planetary annihilation looks promising, you can get into the beta if you preorder i believe, haven't tried it myself yet tho.

I think there is still some life left in the genre, but you are right about the classical rts like age of empires, they don't seem to make those any more.

Planetary annihilation early access was 100+ bucks last i checked which is ridiculous for any game

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The idea was really good, and the turn based map also, however, the RTS gameplay was SOOOOOO one dimensional, mass an army, go zerg, such a dissapointment. Specially after Starcraft universe's three completely different races. Even 12 years old Starcraft had more diversity and better gameplay than Dragon Commander

i loved spending stupid amounts of time either building a super fancy base only to save the map and win or do some rp with some of the units like in AoM i once pretended a huskarl left the rest of my norse army and started its own tribe with a few houses barracks and a wall or spamming godpowers to flatten every tree on the map like the big areas of tree's on the oasis map

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I've heard really good things about Planetary Annihilation. It's still in beta though.

its it just a spiritual successor to the predecessor to the supcome games? so tons of units only to lag the game and make it near impossible to finish the match :/

[Djuntas]

sc2 is build up your base fast or get overwhelmed i dont like being forced to rush its stupid and it kinda makes the graphics pointless as your too busy collecting resources or scouting your opponent to give a shit wether something is slightly more/less pixelated than something that came out 10 years ago

Thats the hole point off RTS genre. Back soon 1½ year ago when I started playing Age of empires2 again I sucked so bad I had trouble beating the AI on hardest. Eventueally I got there - And when I had fully switched to hotkeys it got so much better instead off clicking buildings etc.

A good example is recent games Ive won lately; Cause I was 1-2 minutes faster with my ecomonics (Aka building fast) I got to the last age inn the game fast, and fuss I was able to make the push first, and all the upgrades.

...And now for the point; I knew I was facing better or equal oppents. I could easly see it from there attitude, small hints and ofcourse there rating, but I choose a tactic that are all about speed (Building fast) and no combat until late inn the game.

...So rushing, or playing fast is what RTS is for. It dosen't come easy - I played atleast 200 AI games before I feelt I could even handle playing online.

[Achaman]

Right but people have heard of Zerg though. They don't have to know what Starcraft is, the word "zerg" is known. That is a massive advantage to Blizzard. If I said Tau to someone, chances are they won't know the Warhammer 40K race. They'll think the greek letter or something else. I think I may have phrased this very badly in my first post - the brand awareness is a huge boost, even if it doesn't make you think "lets play SC!" having such recognition is a boon.

i use to collect the tau from games workshop so yeah i know em

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Thats the hole point off RTS genre. Back soon 1½ year ago when I started playing Age of empires2 again I sucked so bad I had trouble beating the AI on hardest. Eventueally I got there - And when I had fully switched to hotkeys it got so much better instead off clicking buildings etc.

A good example is recent games Ive won lately; Cause I was 1-2 minutes faster with my ecomonics (Aka building fast) I got to the last age inn the game fast, and fuss I was able to make the push first, and all the upgrades.

...And now for the point; I knew I was facing better or equal oppents. I could easly see it from there attitude, small hints and ofcourse there rating, but I choose a tactic that are all about speed (Building fast) and no combat until late inn the game.

...So rushing, or playing fast is what RTS is for. It dosen't come easy - I played atleast 200 AI games before I feelt I could even handle playing online.

not really sc specificly focuses on being fast

i couldnt care less about online i have enough fun at skirmish vs ai or coop vs ai

[Kilpi]

The latest Age of Empires and Civ 5 was pretty brilliant, dunno about the OP.

How is Civ5 an RTS?

[Achaman]

i cant stand might & magics final fantasy style instance turn based combat

building units at one point then get sucked into an almost chessboard like instance and you take turns moving and eventually attacking :/

[lordjust]

An explanation could be that the market has changed. You don't get that many RTS that are so good that everyone will like them. Nowadays you'll get some that are specialized to a certain audience with low production costs. Only exception is SC2 and maybe Company of Heroes. Production costs did explode over the years. Tomb Raider was sold over 4 mio copies and is still considered a failure because it didn't sell enough. AAA games need to sell at least 6mio copies or more (Tomb Raider target was 7mio) to a success.

When looking at RTS it's hard to sell that many copies if it isn't played competitively world wide or has a big enough target audience. The whole RTS genre needs a reboot like the point and click adventures. You need a low cost RTS that makes things different and sells millions over millions of copies.

[biolink22]

i cant stand might & magics final fantasy style instance turn based combat

building units at once point then get sucked into an almost chessboard like instance and you take turns moving and eventually attacking :/

A lot of people in this thread seem to be confusing RTS (Real Time Strategy), Starcraft being the best example, and TBS (Turn Based Strategy), ala Might and Magic/Fire Emblem.

[Deleted]

sc2 is build up your base fast or get overwhelmed i dont like being forced to rush its stupid and it kinda makes the graphics pointless as your too busy collecting resources or scouting your opponent to give a shit wether something is slightly more/less pixelated than something that came out 10 years ago

You don't have to rush LOL! Just play save. ;x

[Djuntas]

i use to collect the tau from games workshop so yeah i know em

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not really sc specificly focuses on being fast

i couldnt care less about online i have enough fun at skirmish vs ai or coop vs ai

Yea, all RTS is about speed for sure. Witch is why I never got good at Warcraft3, so only played MOBA/tower defense, and the odd AI games on medium.

I can also still find it alot off fun to play vs AI, but sadly no matter how good its made, its still easy to abuse it. Not gonna go into game-langue here, but lets call it a funnel tactic, where you guide the AI's units to, and easly kill them inn that place...When abusing such tactics even 2 or 3 AI's are easly done, just cause its not smart enough to say "hold on...Bad move".

Trough when I played vs someone I won over fast online I useally tell them to go practice on AI, especially Arabia map vs 2 AI on hardest - Took me months to win that myself, but its good practice to get swarmed and survive

[Deleted]

Sins of a solar empire (& sins rebellion) are pretty good. The total war series is still going strong as well if you are into turn based strategy games too.
Planetary annihilation looks promising, you can get into the beta if you preorder i believe, haven't tried it myself yet tho.

I think there is still some life left in the genre, but you are right about the classical rts like age of empires, they don't seem to make those any more.

I agree with the OP. And i think a lot of you guys are misunderstanding what he wants. But i also think he might be fooling himself a little.

The warcraft series and the starcraft series was never really a base building game. Well, you build a base, but thats not main gameplay of the game - the combat is.

Real base building games include age of empires 1+2, Empire Earth and so forth.

I want games with more then 3 different resouces where you build real time build a base(civ is good, but not an rts) and for the love of god not in space.

Starcraft is good and fast paced, i want slower pace like AoE where you have time to really build up your city.

And tbh every AoE game after AoE 2 sucked :/ They started that "if you want new cities you have to build them at specifik points crap".

Empire earth was cool, but i'm more into medieval only(besides it being old now).

I totally get where you are coming from. But the warcraft + starcraft generation wont sadly

Oh and i knwo that technically warcraft came out before age of empires, but if you are honest to yourself most people started warcraft with warcraft 3

[Yunru]

Yea, all RTS is about speed for sure. Witch is why I never got good at Warcraft3, so only played MOBA/tower defense, and the odd AI games on medium.

I can also still find it alot off fun to play vs AI, but sadly no matter how good its made, its still easy to abuse it. Not gonna go into game-langue here, but lets call it a funnel tactic, where you guide the AI's units to, and easly kill them inn that place...When abusing such tactics even 2 or 3 AI's are easly done, just cause its not smart enough to say "hold on...Bad move".

Trough when I played vs someone I won over fast online I useally tell them to go practice on AI, especially Arabia map vs 2 AI on hardest - Took me months to win that myself, but its good practice to get swarmed and survive

You know what i do with AI.
Lets say i play generals with shockwave mod. Once i totaly anahilate ai on very hard i leave 1 building untouched. Then i build 200 gla katjusas and nuke the hell out of last building.

[Deleted]

Give it another year or two, some good RTS games in development. Like Creative Assembly Total Warhammer Fantasy game and I recall seeing something about Sega getting the rights to make another Warhammer 40k RTS as well, need to double check that though.

[Wildmoon]

In any real RTS games out there, being faster will give you an advantage because you are playing "real time" strategy game. The more action you can perform in certain time will give you advantage. The degree varies for different games. WarCraft3 for example is slower paced than BW and SC2.

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The champs of RTS will make another.... its just not telling how long. They sell tons of games just from people playing the campaign, not to mention the "small" community that watches every tournament available. I know maybe 100k viewers for a major is small these days because of LoL, but i still think its the second biggest esport out there.

It's not that SC2 didn't sell well. It absolutely did because it was record breaking game. The point is that there are many better options out there for Blizzard to make business wise. SC2 sold well for 6 mil copies but you know D3 sold 13 mil and you look at the playerbases for these "MOBA/Dota/ARTS whatever you wanna call it" games. Not a smart move business wise to make another RTS.