Gaming Culture: Whatever happened to the RTS Genre?
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- Опубліковано 29 лис 2017
- The RTS genre was the greatest thing possible 20 years ago. But somewhere along the line something was lost. Fewer games were released, fewer games were successful, fewer innovated and even fewer have enough staying power to become part of the culture, just as their predecessors. So, what happened?
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so how about describing both Empire Earth 3 and Command and Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight as Superman 64 of RTS?
AOE2 is realy making a comeback in the rts genre, and yea its also old as shit.
no mention of total annihlation one of the first games to apply physicals like gravity and weather that affects shots or having 3d models and having the largerest unit cap at the time
mount and blade
GaminGHD I must disagree. when I think of modern day RTS games I think of something closer to strong hold 2 or company of heros (the first one) not starcraft. (granted strong hold 2 is more of a hybrid and not exactly modern). an when I think of classic RTS games I think of C&C:TD.
star craft in all honesty sucks; it is slightly below average to me. in fact I would argue star craft aside from decently balanced factions was actually a REGRESSION for the RTS genre. an that is because while playing star craft I did not feel like a commander at all I felt like a baby sitter because drones even if you put the rally on the minerals they would just sit there an do nothing. even in the old original C&C games ore trucks would automatically seek out and gather ore till they have mined out their section of the map sometimes going across the map on a ore hunt. it left me to command my army and to build my base.
I'm pretty sure there will be blizzard cuck boys going "na you just don't understand its attractive to have to order your drones to do everything. its part of the charm" to this I say that is not part of the charm at all. the charm of starcraft was how all three factions felt different, part of the charm is the jokes it made in the campaign, part of the charm is its old style graphics, having to tell your workers what to do every single time however is NOT apart of that charm it is TEDIOUS. an before those certain people say "o yeah the Koreans are fine with!"
My favorite RTS game is still Rise of Nations. I liked how the game was about territory control and building your nation rather then just constantly sending a set of units at the enemy over and over again.
Shadow Kin i spent a lot of time playing that game.
I agree
Hearts of Iron series sorta fills both of those descriptions at once but okay sure
@TheAethelWulf Sadly so :c
The game was a mess, don't get how you liked it.
Age of empires,Empire Earth,Empires Dawn Of The Modern World,Rise Of Nation,Star Wars Galactic battleground,Star wars empire at war,Command And Conquer,Starcraft,Warcraft....
The best memories
The Dunes too.
God I miss RTS games.
Age of empires, American conquest, supreme commander, command and conquer; I must have spent hundreds of hours on these.
I feel like a modern RTS, and not an arcadey pseudo RTS, would be truly amazing if done right.
Hell, I’d play full price for an updated version of supcom.
Ben C have you looked into FAF lobby for SupCom?
Mishu great shout - FAF was great. Unfortunately supcom was ruined by late game lag as the AI kept giving commands to dead units. Even with a good PC it became unplayable after a while which is a real shame. Still one of my favourite RTS games to date.
Well, I've heard about another SupCom community project called LOUD AI. If you're interested more into playing against non human beings it might be worthwhile to check it out, although i have no further information about whether or not it fixes the problem you've mentioned
Interesting, I will check that out. Thank you!
Age of Empires 2 is still alive and well - and has even received multiple (3, in fact) newer expansions as well. Just look for AoE 2 HD on Steam. :) Meanwhile, the same people who made command and conquer - Westwood employees - made an RTS called Grey Goo recently, which you can see in the last few clips in this video. It didn't perform too well commercially, but if you'd like to try it out, you'll find it on Steam.
How to reinvigorate the RTS genre?? I got it guys!!
*REAL-TIME LOOT BOXES AND MICRO-TRANSACTIONS!!!* You have a PayPal payment interface right in the game's control panel so you can hire mercenary units, increase production speed (for a limited time), sensor scan areas of the map, etc. for real money. It'll be great!!!
flexibleaspect stop giving them ideas!
RTS EA edition?
>implying the playstore isn't already full of these
RTS mobile in a nutshell
All multiplayer mobile games in a nutshell* ftfy
I can't believe how nobody ever mentions Myth: The Fallen Lords when talking about old RTS. I can't believe how it didn't get more popular either, it's a strategy game that had AI better than anything before or since. Yes, when you'd shoot at enemy ranks, they'd MOVE AWAY. The computer would use low tier units to bait your archers too close and then ambush them with quick moving ghouls. It's what I always wanted from RTS and really it's the only game I got that from.
It's not an RTS though, it's a tactics game (that's what he said about Men of War)
Yeah, I guess because it's such a rare niche genre people kind of ommit this gem. Still, the things it has done right could, and should by all means be implemented in RTS genre too.
Yeah, I guess, IDK, I only played Myth 3, which was one of the first games I've played online (along with Battlezone 2). From what I understood, it's the least liked one. Still, I thought it was great.
The first one has been made to run (with the engine of Myth 2) on newer systems, many issues were corrected and graphics vastly improved. I really, REALLY recommend playing the first one through ;) It's an experience one of a kind.
He didn't even mention Age of emipres, what can u expect
*BUILD MORE TESLA COILS!*
Honestly, real time strategy games were just perfect for the nerds dominating the computer industry at the time. The niche culture was the mainstream. Today, we have everyone with a computer and a console, from their athlete cousin, girlfriend, to their grandma playing games. Sensory-based reaction and less strategic games like FPSes has been psychological proven to be more in line with how most people think than the constant complex management of many moving parts. Now the niche has turned into what it was, a niche. And I'm not hating on RTSes, it's my favorite genre.
You don't need the "e" for the acronym plurals.
And i do agree RTS is a niche.
I've always been horrible at FPS games and enjoyed strategy, so I guess I'm just weird.
The thing with the RTS though is that the MOBA basically killed it. It's one of the few times I've seen a genre killed by the creation of another genre.
I would say MOBA only killed RTSes for a specific type of player. People who love RTSes for managing a lot of units compared to players who just manage one unit in MOBAs are often very different people in personality. (Not saying people can't do both, but one usually enjoys one over the other somewhere)
Bad habit of mine.
Although I'm not a fan of it, Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War and the Company of Heroes games from Relic/THQ should be mentioned. They're one of the few players in the RTS genre anymore...
Dune 2, Red Alert 1 and 2, Starcraft, AoE, etc. And these were just the RTSs. Then there were games like Commandos, Deus ex, Half-life, Duke Nukem, Doom, Startopia, Diablo 1 and 2, Fallout 1 and 2, etc. I´m really glad, that I was able to enjoy the golden age of gaming, because to be honest, now I´m too lazy to play games. Even though I would surely find the time, the problem is, that I don´t enjoy it anymore somehow.
Lol same here pal. I still pick a new game up now and again and all i get faced with is the same game i played 20 years ago only somehow they always manage to make it worse or less interesting. New games are less engaging, almost never feature enough player agency and just get dull very quickly, absolute husks of creativity. The amount of games i truly enjoyed and finished in the last 5 years i can count on one hand. It's a sad thing.
The last game I finished was Mass Effect 3 and Deus Ex Human Revolution. And that pretty much sums up my gaming life in the last 10 years. But hey, at least we have fond memories of the good old times! My grandpa used to tell me stories about war, school, etc. I will tell my grandkids stories about the time, when I escaped the Majestic 12 prison or how I saved the nuclear power plant in Gecko!
Not just you. I missed out on the late 90s PC gaming, but over the last 2 years I've gone back and played a lot of the old classics. And guess what - they completely destroy most new games I've played over the last 5 years. Games like Fallout 1, Planescape Torment, Thief, System Shock, Deus Ex, Jagged Alliance etc. are simply on another level compared to Horizon Zero Dawn or Far Cry 4.
Jiri Sluka oh exactly the same problem here. games today are no fun anymore , but if i have the time and i play some good old ones, i can't stop playing. try aoe. or rise of nations. or warcraft 3 (even though it had somehow some problems). they all keep u staring at the monitor for long.
Ragnarok agreed. If u compare them with the older games, u see that the new ones have one thing in common and that is limited ideas. they don't develope their ideas very well and instead focus on unimportant things like graphics for too much! I'm not saying we should stick 2 old graphics but there shouldn't be too much focus on it that u can't make a good gameplay or a story.
for example look at the mount and blade series. It's a masterpiece and even the graphics are gorgeous (i mean the old versions). Unlike many other games they didn't ruin the mount and blade 2 by paying too much attention to graphics. because something that doesn't need change,doesn't need change. and they didn't bring in some bullshit political correctness.
this lack of ideas and story shitting for the sake of political bullshit correctness (which no one gives a fuck about) are gonna hold American companies back while there are many good companies in Germany and eastern Europe that are getting a lot of attention. because they work with patience and don't ruin the real elements of the game.
But there's still hope after all. i mean rockstar is doing a good job and there are lots of games coming.
but many of former great companies are going down and new ones are rising . as it always happens in every industry.
Too complicated for casuals
San Nico Well yeah kinda , but once you get the hang of it it is really fun for casuals.
well you could say the same about fighting games, but we still see them today.
so casual nowadays is weaker than casual in the past! i see
Gab Stu but fighting are more frenetic,so casual gamers can play and have some fun
na, they get beaten by veteran and kick, that happens in most games, the only one that is not a example for that is dragon ball fighterZ, cause they made a specific system new players can enjoy.
I've been following an upcoming RTS being developed by KING Art Games, Its called Iron Harvest and looks to have a lot of things I've wanted in an RTS in a long time. Destructible scenery that can also be used tactically with solidly developed cover mechanics. A very high level of detail in units and animations making lack of clarity a non-issue. I'm hoping besides these things that the actual campaign side and progression side of the game are nailed down well. If so this could be the next evolution of the RTS genre in my eyes and hopefully set a positive precedent for future RTS titles.
iron harvest gameplay come from the successfull RTS game named company of heroes which came out in 2006.
so it will be not an evolution at all but just successfull gameplay mechanics whith better graphics with an original setting (WW1 with mechs and battle suits that looks like fallout suits).
there is too much command and couquer and starcraft clones out there, but very few COH and total annihilation clones. also most TA like games didn't maked it and are still being considered inferior to supreme commander forged alliance which came out in 2007...
remember dawn of war? it was such a successfull game which the 2nd one didn't nailed it like the first one but it was still good.
today you mostly see few RTS that are either remakes (like cossacks 3), failure (like dawn of war 3) or considered inferior to previous famous RTS (like ash of singularity compared to supreme commander).
NB: if you like destructive land that is also used tactically i suggest you take a look at men of war assault squad 2.
I'm looking forward to Iron Harvest as well.
Back in the day I loved C&C, Red Alert 2, Blitzkrieg 1 & 2, sudden strike.
Fantasy & sci-fi themed RTS I couldn't really get into. Stellaris is the current space RTS I suppose, but in my opinion they made it too complicated for the casual gamer. I haven't played it since the beta, but have watched game play.
EA bought and shut down Westwood, which killed the C&C/ RA franchise, but their last few RA games had been pretty meh.
The big question is how to be able to bring them successfully to console, without really needing a m&kb. To ignore the potentially 100+ million gamers on console wouldn't be a sound business plan.
Older RTS weren't really about online play, so to me single player, co-op and being able to build my own maps would be crucial. Obviously in this day and age a multiplayer function and being able to download user generated maps would be important.
I also think that "simple" is better than "complex" in terms of the learning curve. This is what made C&C/ RA addictive, fun and kept me playing.
$60 release tag is pretty hefty, but it looks to be a AAA game.
I liked how CoH played, but never got into it. The setting looks better than CoH though, so maybe it'll become a good successor.
Yeah, I'll be waiting to see the finished game before making the decision to shell out anything like $60
Iron harvest is a CoH clone. Nothing new really. Will it do good? Yeah all the CoH fans will play it maybe. But it isnt anything ground breaking.
Red Alert 2 and 3 , Age of Empires 3, Company of Heroes, Sin's of a Solar empire, Company of Heroes, Supreme commander, Ashes of the singularity. Love the RTS genre
Great video, but I think You kinda forgot Total Annihilation. An incredible game, with amazing graphics (for the time), great music and real physics. It also came out year before SC. It still has a very dedicated albeit a bit small scene around it. Honestly I think TA would probably deserve a video of its own.
We almost got TA 2 when wargaming.net bought the license.
He didn't forget it. He mentioned it in the last 4 minutes of the video.
He just said that it existed when mentioning planetary annihilation
TA was the first RTS with real physics implemented
TA was the first rts with full 3d modeling
TA was the first game ever with dynamic music
It had full modding support
And it released year before SC, it's one of old pillars of the genre.
Dune 2 had dynamic music.
Yea, and according to wiki Frogger in 1981 was the first game with adaptive music anyway.
I dunno why I thought it was first, maybe they used some smart script and i mixed those up, or just a brain fart
What happened to RTS games is the same thing that happened to true RPGs, they were killed in favor of button mashing action games for this new generation.
My problem with this competitive blizzard RTS is the fact that the maps in them feel like a chess board, as if someone has built an arena for you. I prefer RTS games with big maps where you can expand without limit.
Moving on, since you asked about ideas on how to innovate the RTS genre, I would consider adding "neutral" factions. Let me explain: considering that a given RTS has a big map, you start off as a squad of settlers and warriors. You don't start with a town hall, neither can you build it right off the bat. Instead, you have to scout around the map. But it is already settled, you and other players are not the only entities. You will find various settlements and villages of neutral factions, and depending on the type of the faction, their attitude towards strangers(e.g. if they were previously raided/attacked by another player, they will be hostile) or the size of your squad, they will determine whether to attack you or let you in. You could try to pacify them, offering various gifts and protection. If you're generous enough and if other requirements are met, they may even let you settle. That's where the more "classic" RTS starts. Bear in mind, these neutral factions can also fight other neutrals, so by joining them you will automatically be considered an enemy by these other neutrals. Other players may use this to their advantage. You can recruit the neutrals as your troops, and by building some advanced barracks you could re-train them into your faction specific troops.
thats basically 4x games in a nutshell
Yes, except most of them are wargames(they use board-like campaign maps) and/or turn based. They also include loads of other mechanics that an RTS doesn't need. This is closer to Rise of Nations but without all that Civ progression thing.
You just gave me a great idea for a custom mode for our game! Thanks a lot ^^
God.
Woah, I sure didn't expect someone to incorporate this into their game, but I really wish you luck with that!
P.S. @Contec Games I've looked up your game on steam, It looks very intriguing, definitely added to my wishlist. Perhaps I can add you on steam?
Oh, my. I've read through 308 comments and nobody mentioned the *Warlords Battlecry* series. Especially *WBC 2* (my favourite) and *3* .
WBC 1 and 2 (don't know exactly about 3, it was close) appeared before Warcraft 3, and they already had the hero idea. And more RPG elements, very nicely integrated and coherent I'd say. But here the heroes aren't just a unit that you buy from a building, you actually create it before playing and it go with it in the campaign or skirmishes or multiplayer battles. They are persistent.
Every unit had experience but could only level up like 6-7 times. And it simply gained stat boost, but, at least for the smaller units, the max level unit had more than twice the power than the level 0 one.
The heroes on the other hand, they could go to level 50 in WBC 2, and unlimited in WBC 3 (literally). And they had 4 attributes - Str, Dex, Int and Charisma. The also had 10 skills, each being a combination of 2 attributes. Like, a hero with 6 Dex and 9 Int would have 12 Speed (Dex+Dex), 15 Resistance (Dex+Int) and 18 Magic or whatever that skill name was (Int + Int). And each of this skill had impact on some stat - Speed was both the running speed and the attack speed; Resistance gaved you more armor for the different types of damage (% reduction) and Magic determined how much max Mana you had, the mana regeneration, and a minor casting boost.
There were also things like command: heroes had a command radius around them (the bigger the Command skill, the bigger the radius). Your units there were inside the command radius had little bonuses (depending on the Morale skill) to their combat and speed skills.
Heroes had classes. 4 big ones and about 20 specializations. Initially when you make a hero, you only choose it's race. When you get to level 2, you choose it's class (eg Figher or Wizard). And when it gets to level 3 you choose it's specialization (eg. Barbarian, Druid, Archmage, Death Knight, Runemaster, Pyromancer etcetc). And each specialization had it's own set of special skills and eventually access to some spell circles.
All in all it had a lot of little mechanics which felt really interesting to play with. Warcraft 3 looked really bland in this department compared to it.
But it did had it's drawbacks: besides not getting to be widely known, the games weren't too polished. Multiplayer was kind of basic. The races, while fun, were totally not balanced. Heroes too. Competitive matches were usually only played as mirror race, with no heroes or only temp (created on the spot) heroes of level 3 (the lowest), because of how OP the heroes could get.
I'd say it was quite innovative. In the same way (but more I'd say) as 7 Kingdoms, which is another really nice game. I'd wish they would get a modern remake. At least 7K you can get it for free online - it's creator released the code and also made the source code available, and I don't remember if he or somebody else started to patch the game to be compatible with today's OSes. Really nice from him.
Thank you for being the only person to mention my favorite strategy game. i still have the same copy i got on release date.
"They Are Billions" definitely put the genre back into the spotlight (at least for a while).
That is pretty good, but basicly a stupid button smashing game for kids.
That is pretty good, but basicly a stupid button smashing game for kids.
@@pohtoj1 I got smashed by the zombies how do you surive ?
Age of Empires and its sequel easily deserve as much early RTS praise as StarCraft.
Still hooked on Age Of Empires II, but Dune 2 , Settlers, Warcraft and C&C was what made RTS a thing.
i loved the Earth series ... so much time spent in RnD dept :-)
What happened? They made the games simpler, faster, and with more clicking and less thinking. Look at Supreme commander and what happened to the second one. That's what happened.
Cant really agree with that. I never played Supreme commander but i think you are generally speaking about RTS games like SC or any RTS with a high skill ceiling. Micro is an important part of any RTS game. Doesnt mean there is less thinking involved. Because you can click as fast as you want but if you dont have a plan or a strategy you will likely lose.
At the same time, micro is a barrier to new players - their strategies might be on point, but if they don't click right, they are going to learn that their strategies don't work the moment they hit multiplayer. Yes, strategy is necessary in addition to micro, but you can't learn what works or doesn't work strategy-wise when you're losing due to inferior micro.
I liked the design philosophy for micro in Sins of a Solar Empire: "If you micro, yes, that will be slightly better than the fleet's innate programming and auto-usage of abilities. But unless that battle is utterly vital--which it sometimes is--your time is probably better spent on macro-level strategy." Not sure how well that implementation worked out--sometimes I feel like I'm microing my economy--but I feel like it's philosophically a step in the right direction.
Can't agree. Dota is extremely difficult to play. But very popular.
the premise of RTS (purist point of view, played a 10+ years of broodwar and master zerg when sc2 came out) is to have the game be completely fair and competitive. That aspect makes it difficult to make money, and frankly way too monotonous for a casual to pick up and learn.
I remember playing religiously 3 hours of starcraft every day, writing down notes on how to improve (macro mostly, constantly clicking to manage my economy as smooth as possible) but it was such a grind. I'm not sure if it is fun for every one. It was really fun for me but eventually the game got "figured out" so to speak, where the builds (zvp, zvz, zvt for me) are almost identical, and it boils down to pure execution on how skilled a player is. Sure fancy strategy happen once in awhile, but let's be honestly starcraft was not strategically "deep" and when you're in the top level most of it comes down to practicing a fixed set of strategy and out executing your opponent.
In the end the game was too challenging for the casual, too difficult to make $$$ for developers, and any frequent change to it hurts the balance and fair-ness of the meta game. For refernce, broodwar was _NEVER_ patched after 1999, and it remained the MOST balanced RTS of all time. That in itself is great for the hardcore competitive player and fans, much like how the rule of football has not changed for years. But for a video game to make money and engage new players, it is difficult.
With starcraft I was hoping the game to evolve truly to a sport that is timeless like a real sport, but it did not happen. And with that said, video games do seem to come and go, so enjoy the community you have with your respective game while you can, it won't last forever. I'm forever grateful for what broodwar has given me in its long 20+ years of existence, it's been a wild ride
AOE II community will last forever. Still going strong :).
what happened to the RTS genre? its pretty much APM, the casuals moved on, you cant play an RTS for fun. It always comes down to someone insulting the other over it, the fun of just building a base and launching attacks on a group of people died with the elitist attitude brought on by Esports pushing the genre into a money making product
Its kind of odd for you to say that. Cause RTS has always been about being activly involved in the game and playing to win or have fun when it comes to multiplayer. And you can still have that fun that you are talking about and that is playing single player or comp stomping. You can watch the battles and dont have to work so hard.
+Kaizan
That's simply not true, I first got diamond league in SC2 with 45 APM, my opponent had over 3 times my APM when I kicked his ass. It's not at all about APM, its about having more intelligence than your opponent. (and by intelligence, I mean better scouting aswel as higher IQ, that helps a lot too, we don't have to be politically correct about that)
Gamercatsz i agree APM is not the "i win skill" people think it is. It certainly helps but if you dont have a good strategy you will lose like anybody else.
True, and you need to know the meta game, the counters, some rushes. I think SC2 streamer Winterstarcraft has a video on youtube where he tries to stay under 40 APM on purpose, he's the highest random Master player, he can win any strategy he choses.
For future reference: APM = Actions Per Minute.
I think its a bit of a shame that games like Tzar: The burden of Crown dont get much notice nowadays. I mean the game is like a combo of warcraft, mixed with elements Empire Earth and Stronghold. Shows how RTS community has kinda given in to the new titles that dont have that spark what RTS used to have back in the days :(
They are, and dont get me wrong, most of them are a must play kinda games, but since they made Tzar nothing after seemed to hit the spot for me unfortunately :(
PS. Im not a pessimist, just a depressed optimist xD
The best I ever played were Total Annihilation, C&C generals + zero hour, the original dawn of war and Dark reign. I hope this Genre makes a comeback soon.
I wish you overlayed a title of what games these were, in your gameplay... 9.5 out of 10 video...
You do see RTS like mechanics popping up in games on occasion. Been seeing a lot of footage of They Are Billions recently which is a nice looking spin on that. There's also From the Depths, that's kinda RTS-sandbox-buildy.
I like RTS games that try to actually have some strategy to them. The typical RTS is really Real-Time Tactics, because they have zero strategic elements to them.
I liked what games like Earth 2150 and Warzone 2100 did, where you have a home base throughout the campaign, and you send units out for the missions. Research and production carried over between missions. I also liked what Rise of Legends did.
They are tactics games.
But Strategy is always strategy.
But there's a spectrum for it.
With some games falling more heavily on the short-term tactical side (sometimes covering only a single battle or a few small battles), and others focusing on the long-term Grand Strategy planning level, that plan for multiple wars consisting of dozens of battles, as well as the aftermath and lead up to them.
What most people call "RTS" are just Heavy Tactical Focused Real Time games, while RTS that focus more towards 4x or Grand Strategy are lumped as 4x or GS, even though they can very well be real time as well.
The general genre division is this: real time controllable units combined with base building = RTS
Just the control of armies = RTT
The strategic part in most RTS is in figuring out defend your base, manage resources and destroy the enemy at the same time. Most of these games don't focus on unit control, despite allowing for micro.
This is why in most RTS games, conquering is not the only victory conditions (despite people turning them off all the time). RTS can be long term, but they don't have to. A single skirmish in AoE is still an strategy game.
RTS campaigns that don't have persistent armies like homeworld, often have scenarios with base building and resource management. It's not just about the fighting.
Alot of the grand strategy games are turnbased, like Europa unversalis and Total War. So they don't count in this genre.
Sure you can use tactic techniques in an RTS but that doesn't make it an RTT since it's not what the game is all about. True RTT games are rare, and mostly they turn into turnbased games.
I often consider the skirmish mode from Total War games to be RTT, but it's just a side mode of a bigger game.
you'd like warrior kings
since when is europa universalis turnbased, what are you on boy
I agree with Trifler500. The main problem about modern RTS games is that the only viable strategy that guarantee your winning is "Rush the enemy". So in other words expand quickly so that you can start procuring your units faster than your opponent does. And that is necessary because you will be constantly sending your units to attack the enemy.
Now the true RTS games are those who actually demand from the player to go and chose the right time for attacking the enemy and punish the player heavily if he chose the wrong time (heavy counter strike).
So why aren't more RTS games like this out there? I suspect that this has to do with the fact that it is much harder to develop an AI which would act like this. So most RTS games have much simpler AI which is just constantly sending their units attacking you all the time.
Another problem with modern RTS games is that their game pace is too fast. You see if the game pace is slow enough you have time to plan and to strategize your next move but if the game pace is to fast you simply don't have any time for planning or strategizing. Want an example?
Go and check the difference between Supreme Commander (great strategy game with relatively slow pace) and Supreme Commander 2 (very similar to the original one but with higher game pace). I'm willing to bet that when you are playing Supreme Commander 2 you spend much les time strategizing.
And if we finally check Planetary Annihilation which is basically Supreme Commander on steroids you see that there basically no time to strategize so it is no wonder to see people just more or les randomly plunking various buildings around trying to expand as fast as possible in order to be able to overwhelm the enemy with numbers. Well that is no RTS.
God I long for RTS games where you would spend hours playing on just one mission. RTS games where your planning is much more important than the speed of your clicking.
i remember i enjoyed Dune 2000. it had lots of vehicles to choose from and the sandworms are just savage!
I am somewhat depressed how Company of Heroes did not make it into this video
You mentioned Galactic battlegrounds without mentioning Age of Empires...
Thoughts:
- Harder for streamers & youtubers to interact with the audience while focusing on an RTS.
- Explosion of the game industry. If most gamers played RTS games, but then the gamer demographic increases by multiple orders of magnitude, then that original demographic is smaller in comparison to the new demographic of gamers.
- People still play Brood Wars and Outpost 2. The older the game the friendlier the community.
- Still good RTS games coming out like Northgard.
- RTS genre has merged with the MOBA genre, city building genre, and the tug of war genre. Games like League of Legends and CitiesXL target RTS fans.
- RTS games tend to require more focus to play than other genres, whereas many people want to simply relax after work and feel a sense of progression with low effort required. My Dad used to play RTS games daily but now prefers city building games because his empire persists when he logs out.
- Server costs!!! If you visit MMORTS.com you'll eventually find that it is hard to do networking for multiplayer RTS games. Games like Celetania, Ballerium, Time of Defiance or Boundless Planet can't pay the server costs for hosting persistent RTS maps.
I love how you mention so many RTSes that I've played and liked but that you never hear about anymore these days. I still play R.U.S.E. on a semi-regular basis, just in singleplayer - I only recently completed the entire campaign on the highest difficulty. I don't know how to save the genre, it's something I think about sometimes, but mostly what comes up is different takes on/homages to existing strategy games. I really, really, really resent Starcraft and MOBAs especially for the effect they've had on the RTS genre.
There is an RTS genera that has a handful of games developed, which is the stealth tactical ones like Desperados 3, missions take hours to finish and requires careful planning, with the release of the new Desperados that proves there still audience who like it and it got high ratings everywhere, imagine if that gets combined with multiplayer where each player will be in control of one character, that could revive this sub genera, I am fine with single player but multi player could be revolutionary addition
There's nothing like playing a mission for hours, even days, and slowly but surely exploring the map, strengthening your base defence and coming up with a clever strategy to eventually own the enemy, while still having to fight a long battle to win. When I heard for the first time a populair strategy is to simply "rush" the enemy, I always asked myself "where's the fun in that?". And still to this day I think we're so focussed on efficiency and quick fixes that we forgot that the RTS genre was always about slowly working towards a goal, through hardship and difficult lessons, but succeeding after a long strategic fight. This is why I don't play Call of Duty. I just don't like dying every few minutes and then starting over from scratch. In the tactical FPS Arma you have missions that sometimes take hours to complete. You essentially try to avoid being seen or shot so you plan everything carefully and if you succeed it's usually because you used a good amount of strategy and took your time. And when you work towards a goal that requires true strategy and thinking, once you succeed, you feel you've totally earned this victory and you can be proud of it. I think this is what we somehow lost in the RTS genre.
You make some great points, particularly for a fellow turtler/explorer like myself. I've always thought that the near-perfect design of Starcraft/Brood War, as a game that appeals to rushers, turtlers, and those in-between, and as a multiplayer game that ended up being perfectly positioned for the eSport craze it helped create, lured much of the industry away from designing an RTS game where the long, almost leisurely turtle-type strategy is a good one, or is even viable, at least in multiplayer. After all, quicker matches = more matches, spectator sports thrive on fan energy, and at the end of the day all of this can basically be thrown into a single bucket named "$".
One reason I enjoyed Starcraft/Brood War's SP campaign so much is that it was full of missions that required the kind of methodical time/effort/strategy I preferred. I don't recall any of the standard materials-gathering base-building missions that required something like a rush. Then again, that was SP; in multiplayer Starcraft there was the Zerg rush, Zealot rush, etc.
Not completely on-topic but there were games in the past that disappointed me in other, similar ways. I was always frustrated to see a strategy game released with standard units (we can also have this discussion in terms of tile-sizes) that are larger than necessary, so we can better see the unit graphics or whatever. In every RTS a single standard-sized unit or tile takes up a given amount of screen real-estate. If the game in question doesn't provide an option to zoom, then the larger that standard-sized unit or tile is, the less battlefield can be seen/accessed/played on, and the fewer strategic options are available to the player. Warcraft III, for instance. Think of it in terms of a grid; what happens to strategy in a game with a 20 x 20 grid, vs. a game with a 200 x 200 grid? Imagine chess with a board 4x the standard size.
Anyway, I've got several older games that I've never played that have now been remastered; AoE II, for instance. I'm going to play that and the rest of them I haven't played, and go back to my favorites, and maybe someday there will be enough of a market for the more cerebral and strategic slower-paced RTS, as opposed to the arcade-like "builds"-based RTS.
I agree with you on all points. What the RTS multiplayer scene needs is good pve options where you can team up with a couple of people. Micromanage one or a few bases together and have a killer AI oponent that takes a lot of strategy and cooperation to beat. I think RTS games could be designed to be slower paced. As in that you have to wait for the night to fall to make a stealth attack on a base or that you have slow building cues and you have to explore a lot of the map first to get the right resources to build something good. It could be designed in such a way that resources spawn and grow over time and that you have to take your time farming it and that every upgrade you do makes you good in one thing but less good in another. So you have to take your time to decide what upgrades are best for the situation you're in and so there's a lot of tweaking that takes time. There's a lot of possibilities to revitalise this genre but I think slow co-op PVE should be the main focus to make it fun, and rushing should be penallised in some way.
You would like the partical fleet/creeper world game/games
That's a good argument you pose there. I think what I don't like about rushing is that feel like there's only one real good tactic to counter it, robbing me of coming up with creative strategies but as you point out, a rush can be just the beginning of a longer match which has room for creative strategies in the later game.
I wish there are more games like Stronghold series.
Consoles and the adoption of controllers killed it. You can't play an RTS with a controller - it just doesn't work. You need a keyboard and mouse.
Halo Wars pulls it off all right.
RA1 on ps1 still playable. Not the best but still playable. 😂😂😂
So, with regards to Achron, the fundamental issue with that game was two-fold:
1. Information was an absolute nightmare to keep straight, since time travel + fog of war meant you basically didn't know anything that was going on.
2. In order to prevent abusing the finite memory limits of computers, you couldn't manipulate events far enough in the past to duplicate units. However, this meant players tended to play at the very edge of the playable time, so that when their armies arrived, their opponents couldn't use their own time manipulation abilities to counter it. This might as well have just been any other RTS at that point.
It was a neat idea, and there were other issues related to unit design, economic balancing mistakes, and being generally too far ahead of its time technologically, but it basically ended up playing the same as a normal RTS, just with more difficulty controlling units.
The lack of strategy is what killed RTS games. SC2 is about how quickly you can micromanage, not how well you strategize. The only game with actual strategy that I can think of was the Total War series, with some poor entires and some excellent ones. Overwhelm the right flank and hit them from behind with cavalary to cause an army wide rout vs they built a particular unit so I will mass build their counter unit. One is strategy, the other is rock paper scissors.
They would lootcrate the crap out of RTS games nowadays.
Dunno, I like launching Black Crusades as Chaos Warriors in Total War: Warhammer.
They actually have.
Look at Company of Heroes 2, they put money locks over content everywhere.
What about Real Time Tactics? Things like Men of War?
Technically, Total War is an RTT, so it's still going strong.
World in Conflict
Alexander Yordanov would xcom count?
I think homeworld was probably the best game of all time. So innovative, so beautiful in 1999.
Personally, I'd like to see a mixture between Stronghold, and an RPG. The game would be exactly like stronghold, but your lord is your RPG character that gains exp and items that you carry with you after skirmish matches.
You guys are doing great job. Can you also write down the game-names on your video? I don't recall which game the last one is
That's Grey Goo. I'll try and add captions for the game names in future videos.
Clash of Clans, that's what happened to RTS.
I would see if I could pick up the license to sacrifice and do a reboot of that game.
The reason why is simple: sacrifice has aged relatively well, has a very fervent fan base, and as we saw with Brutal Legend has reasonable potential for having a strong console version.
I hate to say it but unless there is console potential in it no studio will put big money behind making a strategy game. Any type of strategy game.
Sacrifice was Charming add furnetic combat but didn't let itself get bogged down in Tech trees or Base building. It was an action game first and RTS game second. That said the game did have some depth of tactics and combat strategy and how units and their skills as well as your spells could all synergize.
I could have a unit that uses implosions to pull things toward essential point where I then cast a large wall of fire on top of the point they're targeting for massive damage. Or I could use the lasso ability on a flying unit to pull a boss off the map instantly killing it.
I would make it run smooth on OLD PCs. Then, I would have the map split into more parts, parts connected through tunnels (some fixed, some mobile). Each map would have it's own set of modifiers, some of which would be randomly selected from a list of possible choices, and some which would be fixed regardless of the match. Adding to that, I would base it on the idea of medieval warfare, but with "time travelers" and "map nomads" in the sense that accomplishing certain goals would allow one to save technology research, and have one map run at a different speed than the other (whichever was the slowest becoming the default speed, so one would move in slow-motion), but moving to that other map would have you start again with a single caravan cart with the numbers of resources inside dictated when sending the cart, and the number of people depending on artifacts defended by natural fortifications and third-party offensive units (a small settlement which renews it's units in 3 waves, one wave for each type of unit from melee, short and medium range, with the long range not renewable).
This way, you would have to deal with multiple maps at once, each with it's benefits and drawbacks, and get more chances to win, while also allowing for luck to play it's role, and have those maps interact only at certain times. The number of maps could vary from 2 to 4, and one research allowing for the worlds to be connected when 2 portals are connected with one-another (by simply having both of them powered on at the same time, to link them, with the link severed when one is powered off).
YEAH!!! Finally someone else who knows that DOW2 was an RTT and what an RTT actually is. I see so many people refer to RTT games as a RTS. Among RTS fans it wasn't as good as DOW but among a decent number of 40K fans it was better because the RTT was closer to the Table top game since you didn't have to deal with base building.
As for the RTS genre in general I think part of the problem is it suffers from an identity crisis which is evident by the Wiki you used as a reference. It seems most people don't even know what a RTS game is as they include Grand Strategy, RTT, 4x, Tactics heavy RPGs, and etc under the RTS umbrella. Sadly this includes Devs in the industry as games like C&C4 which was coming off the hugely popular C&C3 ended up tanking because a bunch of noob devs were put in charge and they figured what RTS fans want is an RTT. Except they don't as the two are about as similar as RTS and Grand Strategy games are.
As for gimics to help bring back RTS, Achron I thought was an excellent game with it's time travel mechanic. The very idea of Time Travel in a game and players working at different points in the time line I would have thought not possible before that game. I do agree the actual combat side of it was lacking when it came to units.
But Achron makes you think so far outside the box it's really unique, like one mission when the game really starts to emphasis time travel you start the mission with a massive force attacking your base and not enough units. You end up having to hold the line long enough that you can build more units to go back in time and help the original defenses but it's more than that as each time they go back you get more time to build so your defenses in the past get stronger allowing you to last out longer.
But you are limited on how far back you can go so you still have to be quick or else the past window will get out of range. So knowing when and where to send them becomes just as important as when and where to attack in any RTS game except now the point in time becomes a factor. And if someone jumps the units in the future before they are sent back then they no longer exist so the changes those units made in the past don't happen. It becomes all the fun and mind bending strategy you would expect from a time travel RTS. But the technology for that mechanic is not easily replicated and I think the devs went into security as the technology was useful in a lot of different applications involving network security as I recall them mentioning getting a lot of offers.
As for the RTS and what to do to revive it, I'm not sure we can expect much from AAA as the industry is all about chasing trends and as you mentioned in the video the market for RTS games has shrunk due in part to an aging fan base who don't have time to learn the complex mechanics of different unit combinations with their fire rates and damage. And the younger crowd who seem to be drawen to the RTS light mechanics of RTT and MOBA style games. While SC just dominates the space but even then I wonder how much of it is purely RTS since SC2 seems to have become the new modder playground that WC3 was with lots of people playing it sololy for the new game mechanics/genres much in the same way they did with Dota/MOBA style modes.
The AAA industry has a habit of declaring things dead, like they did with RPGs, Survival Horror, and pretty much all single player games(it's why everything must have MP these days), which aren't really dead it's just they aren't doing a good job of making them and having thought that just stop release them without trying. When it comes to RTS games I sort of feel it's in that grey area inbetween. As big as RTS was in the past the overall amount of people in the market interested in an RTS has become a bit of a niche. So while the fans are there it's really risky to do as you can't be sure how things are going to fair, especially when you have studios who don't know what a proper RTS game is and they make something like DOW3 claiming it's an RTS which flops and equally incompetent people in suits pulling the money strings see that and think, "Oh another RTS flop better steer clear."
With it's dwindling popular and the flood of other game options I see the RTS as facing the same issues the MMO does. There was a time with every studio was trying to make an MMO and people saw it as the future of gaming with some overly optimistic thinking all games would become MMOs. But the MMO ending up in damned if they do and damned if they don't situation.
As the audience aged they had other obligations and less time so they demanded quality of life improvements to the genre which seemed reasonable at the time but proved to be it's undoing. It took a lot of time to organize raids and find a group which meant you needed to get to know people and form guilds. But even then not everyone is on at the same time so many figured match making would be great, except now you no longer need a guild at all you just join a queue with some random people and go.
This caused two issues as people needed to know what to do in the raid so having being paired with horrible players would ruin your experience as it would end up in a lot of frustration and wasted time. And having to make sure that just about any group could run it meant watering down the raids to the point of not really being much of a challenge and little more than button mashing. This undermined the social aspect of what drew people to MMORPGs as you no longer needed to get to know people and required only the minimal amount of team work.
Another change was fast travel everywhere. It sounds nice as people with less and less time don't want to waste it walking across the world, I remember in some early MMOs people turning down joining their guild mates because it would be 30-60 minutes of travel time from where they were at and they would want to go back there after the group activity was done. And keeping people from the actions seems like it hurts the game so why not make it easier to get around? However the result is the world feels tiny than as people instantly get around everywhere. It also means huge areas become empty as people don't need to travel through them so no chance encounters of finding and helping someone along the way and making a new friend. This further undermined the social aspect of the game as well as the draw of having a big open world you were a part of.
All these changes MMOs continue to make to improve things ended up contributing to their down fall as they became more and more like really fancy looking match making services with places to hang out as you wait to go for the "real" content of the end game raids and other end game task. Because end game was all that mattered, at least in the eyes of many vocal players and most devs who listened to their cries. Which caused many studios to have much of their core game lacking while they tried to focus on an end game which feel far short of the mark. This lead to the failure of one MMO after another as everyone tried to be more WOW like.
... Continued in next post.
So I've gotten off on a tangent and hit post limit but to tie it back in to the topic at hand. I think there is an audience for RTT and RTS games but the problem I've noticed is most people don't know the difference and as a result you got people pushing for the RTT style inside the RTS community which is damaging the genre and it's perceived market viability. Much in the same way the quality of life changes meant to reduce the need for time investment in MMOs undermined the very thing that drew people to them in the first place.
For those who don't know RTT and RTS appeal to different types of people and while there can be overlap the two are actually very different. I'm going to give a general overview of the two to make things clearer. Strategy involves the management of logistics such as with bases, resource gathering, supply lines, troop composition and high level troop movements. Tactics is what most refer to as micro-management in RTS games. It is the positioning of troops behind cover, making flanking actions, timed artillery shots, using key abilities at right time, and etc.
The problem is the genre started out as heavy on the RTS side of things where it was more about building the right units to counter the enemy and planning ahead. But as more and more people voiced their opinion about liking the micro-management side of things with troops games pushed to form a balance between Strategy and Tactics. I think SC manage to hit that sweet spot as strategy is very important but at high levels of play among pros micro can make or break a match, meaning you needed to be skilled in both Strategy and Tactics.
The result of this though is a divided fan base with some wanting it to be move Strategy focused and others wanting it to be more tactical focused as each appeals to a different type of player. As a result many RTS games don't know which way to go and get hammered from both sides as either being not strategic enough or not having enough depth to the units to make micro worth while. And honestly until more people come to realize there is two different genres buried in this argument on how to improve an RTS argument I don't think the RTS is going to find it's footing.
There is nothing wrong with RTT games as I like them just as I like TBT games like Advance Wars, FF Tactics, and many others. However I also like RTS games but I play each for different reasons and for a different experience. I feel the same thing happen with Survival Horror as they turned into Action games with Horror elements in them. Which wasn't what people were looking for in survival horror and thus the studios figure the genre was dead when they just were mislabeling their action games as survival horror.
I'm not really sure what future the RTS has, as it may end up like the Survival Horror in that you'll get some indie studios that make a really go one from time to time but it's still a niche audience so it's not likely to hit mainstream. Even Blizzard with SC2 didn't see as much success as the original. It was still a big success and profitable, just not as big as the original. Which could sadly indicate a declining interest in the genre like with the MMO. And while I don't think either are going to die any time soon or at all. I do think they will simmer in their own niche for the foreseeable future.
Where my supreme commander fans at?
The Age of Empires series is the best RTS series IMO
Can the original Command and Conquer be played on Mac or iOS these days?
What happened to RTS games... Someone created a custom map for Warcraft III called Defense of the Ancients 🤷🏻
@Mark Hanson you're smarter than that, you can guess the meaning of my comment 😜
idk, what is with supreme commander?
once I got intro Supreme Commander - FAF I started to belive it is the best RTS war game on the market... SC and SC2 can't compare if one asks me, the game can be fast paced with an quick end, but also be hours of battling and building, with unlimited resources you have all time. the story is also good (allways subject to ones opinion, I know) and the 3 later 4 factions are balanced and uniquine, while still offering all kind of units to all factions (expect for experiemental (super units) and some few faction own units)... I son't really understand why this masterpice which I think is the best RTS ever developed, don't get even a small sitenote...
this kind of game with the wide varity and still valuable posibilitys how to beat the enemy, that is one way they should go, that including "modern" graphics and some kind of mmo feature. for example: a galaxy map, solar systems, planets and these are the battlefields players can fight on, special skins are a way to make money... I just get the feeling most companys value graphics to high to actually develop something with real depth to the gameplay(supreme commander 2, looks good but plays... less good in my opinion) at least in the RTS genre...
Indeed. Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance is the BEST RTS game EVER MADE in my opinion. I still play it from time to time even though it's not all that stable on modern machines. If only they fixed the damn sim speed problem where it slows down over time because it didn't release AI routines. It would be perfect if that was fixed!
@TalesOfWar have you tried FAF? it is working very well, the slowing down comes from massive amounts of DEAD units since all the wracks stay recycable (and the unlimited ammount of buildings).
@Kyros Droztamyr idk why you mention that know, the real problem with console RTS are the controlls, less button bindings possible and, if you're not skilled, slower...
@Kyros Droztamyr hmmm... didn't really notice that, or I don't remeber anymore XD . but I do remember playing a well made CnC Red Alert on console... just new games and their macro hype is "bad" for a console, can't compare unless you play with a keyboard and mouse ( where I might ask, what is the diffrence between PC and console then? XD )
Big Supcom fan here, though I never really took it multiplayer that much. I was reading an article about Ashes of the Singularity, and one of the things they noted was that most other RTSes are restricted to being 32-bit compatible, and don't take advantage of multi-threading. And while this doesn't matter for a lot of games that are computationally simple, the RTS genre sort of hit against a technological wall where there were limits to the number of things (which includes wrecks in TA-likes) going on in a game.
Ashes discarded all 32-bit folks, and is specifically built to be multithreaded. Unfortunately, I feel like it it plays more like a tech demo than a tightly built and clever game.
I'd like to see a remake of Supcom:FA that takes full advantage of multithreading (a bitch to program, unfortunately) that is purely 64 bit. That late game slow-down is utterly killer.
AotS devs are overstating their claims a bit : SupCom1 (2007) was already partially multithreaded : de.slideshare.net/guest40fc7cd/threading-successes-02-supreme-commander
Warcraft, Total Annihilation, C&C Red Alert 1+2, Empire Earth, Age of Empires, Star Trek Armada, Wargames, Conquest Frontier War, Homeworld 2.
I grew up loving all of these games.
I loved Supreme Commander, it brought back Total Annihilation for me.
I loved Sins of a Solar Empire, because it brought back Conquest Frontier Wars from me also.
Both of these games relate to its older predecessor, but are completely different not to be called the next game in the series.
Was released in the 00s a RTS game with modern war and I can't find it. I remember that you had to take supplies from ships, was kind of similar to EE 2 apart from that you could change ages. Pls help me to find it
no mention of Total Annihilation or the still active Spring RTS project? TA is a much better game than Starcraft. In 1997 TA pioneered RTS elements that weren't seen until many years later.
S0u11ess some stuff that is in TA still dont exist in other games
Hi there !
I'm all with You there on the nostalgia train, but the reason You miss the late 90's and early 2000's is exactly why we can't have nice things anymore. There were so many mechanics explored, so many variations of what an RTS can be, that it is really hard to make something that feels truly fresh. Another thing is that the usual "gaming consumer" is now used to micromanagement and action oriented gameplay, that barely any company is willing to make a game that is more about the big picture.
Another thing is that buildng a multiplayer game that is quick and competetive is so much easier than making a smart AI that will suprise a human player and win a match FAIR, without just resource spawning and other hidde modifiers that make a dumb AI harder to defeat. If we actually had a company willing to put some major money into developing a GOOD AI system, we could get a game that puts a player in charge of actual units (not single people or machines, but actual units) that you could give orders to. Instead of managing 50 "units" (50 single men/machines) I would rather get a game that is all about managing units that are company sized etc. Not giving orders to every single man in that unit, but just selecting "compay A" and giving them the task of securing a bridge. The AI would have to be written well enough for the unit to recognise objectives, figure out positions to take and reak points to attack, while I am giving orders to the other 49 groups. THAT would be something relatively new and enjoyable to me.
You already have Grand Strategy games, 4x games and board games for that...
Like it or not, micromanagement is an essential part of an RTS, it just needs to be better integrated with the macromanagement. The challenge from switching from one to another quick and effortlessly is the barrier that should be tackled.
I agree. I'd love to see an RTS game where you don't have to micromanage each individual soldier/unit to the degree that most games require.
I agree. I'd love to see an RTS game where you don't have to micromanage each individual soldier/unit to the degree that most games require.
I think a way RTS could go would be to blur the lines between RTS and grand strategy.
In Supreme Commander, you can control units as zoomed in as having the camera a few metres above them, up to commanding from a strategic view of the camera being about 50km above ground.
If an RTS were to take it to the point of allowing you to manage units all the way from ground scale to continent/planet scale, I think that could add a new strategic flavour.
The obvious problem that comes with this is micromanagement. How can you coordinate that many units without it being an absolute chore? That's a tricky one to solve, but I think decent AI to allow units to follow common-sense orders like "I will attack this unit 30m from me without the player having to tell me to" would help, but it would be a tricky one to pull off.
Honestly just killing micromanagement and allowing strategic decisions to be the deciding force in matches rather than quick button clicking would get me back into the genre soooo quickly.
Wait, what's that music at the beginning? I know it from somewhere, but I can't really tell from where...
Same with me. I was thinking Minit. Maybe it is? I couldn't find it on the Minit soundtrack but then again I didn't go over the whole thing. It might just be me mixing it up since I played it recently though when really it's something else.
Never heard of Minit, honestly. Personally, I was thinking it may have been from Secret of Mana. Who knows?
*EDIT:* Nope, just checked its OST. Couldn't find it there. This is seriously bugging me. :/
Something Starcraft does that I haven't seen any other RTS even attempt is to make expensive, late-game units which are easily countered by many cheaper early and midgame units. From what I've seen, most RTS's are about getting a large amount of the biggest units and then steamrolling. I think that, among many other things, is worth mentioning about Starcraft.
and to think broodwar has not been patched since 1999 or 1997, where it continues to remain balanced for its entire competitive timeline in south korea 1997 until now. that just blows my mind
They actually kept updating it for 8 years, so until 2006. Spawning Pools in vanilla cost 50 minerals.
Age of Empires? I mean, there's always a bonus to tech level, but it's never going to be a good idea to put cavalry against pikemen, archers against skirmishers, siege against melee units, etc. It's classic rock paper scissors gameplay.
you're wrong. the last balance change is patch 1.08, which spawning pool increased from 150 to 200 minerals. That was 2001, not 2006. My guess of 1999 was pretty close.
Hey man, you're right! I was thinking about the video 7 years in 7 minutes.
As an old school sc fanboy, I do miss the days of being able to watch the likes of boxer, nada, julyzerg, and flash duking it out on tv. Modern RTS just doesn't have the same spark as the old ones. Well, for me at least.
I think a new gimmick for the RTS genre would be an exponentially increasing macro RTS mechanic. You start by micro managing a small tribe (help them get food and resources), then they evolve into a nation, but you no longer micro manage individual people, now you manage towns as a whole and the AI takes over the micro aspect leaving you free to focus on the macro. From a nation you jump into managing a whole planet, then you jump again and you manage a solar system, then you jump up and manage a star cluster, a galaxy and so on until you become the master of the universe. The AI takes over managing the macro level beneath you leaving you free to explore the new level you have reached.
At any time during gameplay you can go down a step and micro manage anything below your level if you so please, or simply jump down to observe how the AI has evolved your galaxy/star system/planet/nation. The AI technology we have nowadays certailny allows us to create such advanced systems and the progression from one macro stage to another would be very long (screw casual players and their fruit fly attention span), becoming the master of the universe would take you many months of gameplay.
Would be an interesting mix of god games, idle games, city builders, 4x and Spore games, while borrowing and refining elements from other genres. I see this as teh ultimate evolution of RTS game and ... let's face it... who would not wanna be the master of the universe?
I got that feeling out of stronghold 2. It doesn't go that far, but feature creep becomes annoying very quickly and gets in the way of real time action. Turn based games keep you on track for that kind of stuff but again you lose the real time quality.
You can also check cossacks series (1, 2,3) and its engine based games like American conquest. These RTS still make me play them a lot.
Man, I was expecting a well-written video with sequences of games you are talking about. What I get is one man babling his opinions on statistics he found somewhere. The man is so lazy he didn't even switch the channel on the screen. Maybe if you labeled it as podcast... but still it is very poorly written and researched.
Where is the Homeworld mention? How could you forget that classic too!
Leon Lu agreed! And that was definitely another way to expand on the genre other than time travel. I get the impression this guy didn't even play rts till years after they were made. Nothing about dawn of war, halo wars either
I always thought a massively multiplayer RTS would be cool. Where some of the troops/heroes were other humans playing in FPS mode. But the overall battle is commanded by one or more humans in RTS mode...would probably take more than $40m though.
War thunder tried something like that with "world war" mode. Apparently the implementation was lacking.
My first contact with PC gaming was during the late 90s and early 200s when RTS where everywhere. It is my favorite genre as of today and I am super excited to see some of the all time classics returning.
Wanna hear a joke?
Stormrise
Kuputo Yepthomi Wanna hear a better one?
Command and Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight.
Broadband internet and technical advancement in computing power made other genres outpace RTS. Real time strategy made sense due to technical limitations of hardware at the time and small packet over dial up internet.
An example of RTS perspective not being able to take advantage of new hardware is Company of Heroes 1 vs. Company of Heroes 2. the minimum requirements increased dramatically but you only got a minimal/negligible increase in performance and graphic quality. Some people say CoH2 looks worse than the 10 year old original.
That's not true. That's the most retarded thing I've ever read. Does LoL have such incredible graphics for example for it to be so successful? NO! The RTS genre is simply more complicated than other casual games. Even the simplest RTS feels like a chore for most people compared to the most complicated FPS or third person shooter.
And who told you RTS games look terrible? CoH 2 is a crap example, it's piss poor optimized and the first CoH looks pretty similar and relatively incredible. The reason RTS games don't have as amazing level of detail is because if, for example, you used the full power of the frostbite engine on an RTS game, you'd need a nuclear PC to run it. It's a given for the genre, since they're the largest scale of all other genres, and since you never play in a completely zoomed in perspective, the inferior detail as a whole is much less noticeable, and necessary for better performance.
You can also say that better gfx in FPS games also killed RTS. Games like AOM started getting fancy gfx, and that wouldn't run on older computers. you start throwing in some sparkles and boom a computer with a VGA video card was just doomed :D
Also not just the better gfx, when people did get the better gfx, their framerate stayed at 30~ but at the same time some were starting to see 60FPS, which made RTS feel slow or weird to play.
The way forwards is by evolving the Genre. All RTS's have so far been more about the "Real Time" than about the "Strategy". As a general rule, simple strategy/tactics done fast absolutely obliterate compex strategy/tactics done at slower paces, even if it's only at 75% of the simple done fast. Starcraft, with it's sublime balance is almost 100% geared towards this concept. That's not a problem in and of itself, but the fact that with practically no exception every single RTS follows this type of gameplay regardless of the setting or lore means that all of these games attract only a single type of player.
In the meantime you can find more complex strategies in games like City Skylines, or an FPS with more "complex" shooting mechanics like COF, recoil, bullet velocity, bullet drop, damage degradation, managing distance to your target etc. Again: There's plenty of FPS's who have more strategy and tactics in them than the actual genre that has "Strategy" in the title. Looking at things like godgames, city builders and transport games you can see that the moment complexity enters the genre, a competitive mode is immediately shelved. This prevents the complex strategy from being incorporated in the average RTS game.
The way forwards would be to start building on the way these games are played. Like FPS's that can attract any type of player based on the speed and simplicty of the controls (arena games attracting the same twitch-players that like RTS's and more complex shooter mechanics, layouts and objectives for all other gametypes), so should RTS's try to delve into other player types and create gameplay for them.
One example would be to take from turn-based action games and put that into an RTS. The RTS would be more slow-paced and have far fewer units to control at any one time, and give the player time to oversee the situation and plan ahead. This would allow far more complex strategies to be carried out and allows the environment to play a far more important role.
Another example I would be a fan off is adding more realism to it. Most RTS's have units that don't really react as you think they would. Get shot at by a tank? Let's shoot it with a rifle! Movement? Let's send all these units through open area's without cover where any obstacle that is available in the game only provides changes to LOS and movement, but not really anything else. Like in Company of Heroes or Men Of War, allow units to take cover, don't use the mathematical attack method where any shot is basically a hit that does a set amount of damage, but allow units to miss, allow the player to alter the chances units have to hit or be hit by using terrain or a more stable firing position. Then add even more realism. Where Company or Heroes and Men Of War hit very close to the mark, they are still won through the speed of the player and using simple tactics. Put each and every single unit of the player under an AI. This AI will only make decisions for units on a local scale, causing the units to take cover, throw grenades, loot corpses for supplies etc. Should the unit feel overwhelmed it might even flee towards another area. Besides the normal orders the player can give the units, he'll also get to make orders to deal with specific situations. Such as ordering artillery to fire a maximum of three rounds before relocating against the ineviteable counter-artillery strike. Giving orders that if a unit is overwhelmed, they will retreat by throwing down smoke and will retreat to a player-defined position. This allows the player to basically queue his micro he would otherwise need to perform, and allows a player to be more of a commander to real, living units than a guy who has to tell every single soldier everything from where to piss to where to stand. It also adds the option of stale orders, as you try to predict enemy attacks and create a set of actions units will take when under specific attacks, only for the battlefield to change and your queued actions now being detrimental. This would require players to have access to a set of predefined queued actions so they can quickly set everything up.
This could be the start of Consoles being actually able to handle RTS's, as the more limited ability to control every unit is the giant problem when you try to play the current RTS genre centered completely around clickspeed, Micro and as simple as possible tactics.
"poweroverwhelming"
I think I died a little watching that. XDD
The answer is not something new but something old. You need to ask why people play RTS in the first place. Course I think one of the main problems is how the units are treated. In most strategy games the units are treated like rock, paper, scissors and thats just not fun after so many hours. Part of the fun of strategy games is making up your own strategy. Its problem solving, but when you use a simple rock paper scissors approach to unit design the strategy becomes simple and stale. What you really want is for the units to be more like chess pieces. That is one of the things starcraft did right. It emulates chess over rock,paper scissors. Outside of some very specific circumstances you can pretty much build what ever you want and the strategy comes from how you use the units not what units to build. One of the big reasons starcraft 2 failed is because the units leaned more towards rock paper scissors than chess. In short you want a strategy game to be good you force the player to use strategy. Force them to use flanks and positioning, force ambushes and sneak attacks. There needs to be strategy in a real time strategy game. the answer is not to throw on bells and whistles, but to distill and concentrate the reasons why people play RTS then give it an interesting coat of paint. Characters and factions that people can care about in a universe people can care about.
Starcraft wasnt a slight tweak of warcraft 2 anymore than later iterations of C&C were... WTF thats pure bullshit. That line and everything its supporting really showed immense bias and misunderstanding of the RTS genre, and history, and is outright wrong.
The reason starcraft was and is still king is because it allowed for a higher level of stylized play that took real skill just to master the most basic of army management with consistency. As a result of never being able to top out at managing the games mechanics you could build your own stylized play, the most basic variance being the macro and micro players.
Nobody understood it for years, it was never about innovating past starcraft it was about understanding why it was the best RTS game in a vacuum, why is was groundbreaking and emulating/ adding to those things, like unit responsiveness, AI variance, and an overall system that allowed you to pick and choose how to manage it to your own tastes and made every other RTS feel clunky.
Everyone tried to make the new starcraft in all the wrong ways, by trying to innovate past it. When they should have taken the time and realized that it defined the genre for a reason first, and then added onto what it built, but here we are decades later and every RTS STILL feels clunky and unresponsive compared to starcraft 1 & 2 in almost every way regardless of what shine feature the devs tried to use to set it apart.
Who cares about setting yourself apart, when your game runs and feels like slow unresponsive shit by comparison? Thats why nothing that tried to beat starcraft even came close.
This is strictly from an online competitive perspective, casual players having fun with things like cheat codes are another animal entirely, and its worth noting that one of the great things about starcraft that also added to its dominance is it could cater to both player bases.
So yah its not starcrafts fault its all the other devs for never stopping to ask why its winning, and has that fact changed things? and then learning from it.
Lol. This is so wrong. The last we all want is an endless series of Starcraft clones. Starcraft was a significant milestone in RTS history, but it's hardly the be all and end all of RTSes. It wasn't even the be all and end all in its own time, apart from in the tournament space because of Blizzard promoting it there. Innovating past it is exactly what they needed to do. What's the point of playing another Starcraft, when Starcraft already exists? Why would I even bother to buy another game then? Just for a different paint job and updated graphics? And nice job caricaturing and dismissing the vast majority of actual players - those 'casuals' who do nothing but 'have fun with cheat codes'. One thing we'll both agree on, though, is that those players - who're the majority of the buyers and so the whole reason an RTS succeeds or fails in the first place - are not defined by how responsive they need the game to be i.e. twitch skills and standardized build orders. You're overestimating the importance of that aspect to the genre, however - very few people want to play a game whose play just boils down to who has the highest APM and has memorized a set of recipes. That's hardly what most people think of when you mention the word 'strategy'. Indeed, a much more popular comment just here on this vid higher up outright claimed that its actually the competitive scene that destroyed the genre (which I think is an exaggeration, but nowhere near as wrong as the opposite perspective seen here).
"Starcraft wasn't a slight tweak of Warcraft 2" - actually, initially it was. When they presented it at E3 in 1996, iirc, it really looked like a reskin of Warcraft 2. Everybody called it Warcraft in Space at laughed at them. So then Blizzard realized that this wasn't going to work, so they actually restarted the project trying to actually innovate something. The game was actually 14 months late because of this.
You're right in the rest of your comment. Starcraft actually allows one to play with his/hers style. It's the single game I know where there were almost NO balance changes for years and years, yet the meta was still evolving. I think they nailed by pure luck. Nowadays all games have periodic balances changes and daily/weekly/periodic challenges and stuff like that to keep the game fresh and fun and give people incentives to try new combos and strategies, so the meta doesn't get into a standstill.
This, it always felt like other RTS developers killed themselves with gimmicky games like Dawn of War 2 and C&C4 after SC2 got announced because they were afraid to compete directly with starcraft.
Starcraft 2 really annoy me when i found out that i can't do LOCAL Multiplayers with LAN with few friends that i physically knew.
Instead its insist i want do some multiplayers session I must doing it on some distant severs (now its called cloud) with extra lag and its assortment BS.
Its purely one-sided economic decision on game publisher part.
@Kyros Droztamyr this is literally the 3rd time in 5mins ive seen you crying about blizzard games on like 3 different posts.
Stop getting mad because you're hard stuck in silver, its because your iq is below 80 and your apm is only 55.
Quick note of a well written RTS for console. Herzog Zwei for the Sega Genesis.
I liked sins of a solar empire quite a lot. It is fairly recent and with some updates/addons
Wow, how do you make a video about the history of RTS and COMPLETELY leave out the AOE series? You said by 1999 the RTS genre simmered down? WTF man? Age of empires 2 came out in 1999! And it was the most advanced and most playable multiplayer RTS of it's time, it got further improved next year in the Conquerors expansion (known as AOC). In 2001 there was an AOC tournament with a $100,000 prizepool, 50k to the winner. AOC is still actively played after all these years and without Microsoft support.
I saw no mention of Total Annihilation or Supreme Commander.... not even Dark Reign Honestly you have no business making this video, you dont even know the subject matter.
I feel like i should make this video.
Total annihilation is one of my all favorite games ever, considering the time it came out. And even better with the expansion.
Sadly, still far better them most rts today. Just dont hear much about it since most of today's star craft 2 button masher kiddies where born nearly a decade after. Most of them caint handle a game that lasts more then 10m
Hell yeah, also recently Planetary Annihilation and Zero-K. Planetary has lots of eye candy and epicness, but fails at engaging gameplay. Zero-K, because it's open source, may be quite underpolished in graphics but has awesome gameplay. I definetely recommend to check it out: store.steampowered.com/app/334920/ZeroK/
Where can i find this 1080p and better playable versions of this old rts games?
I love Starcraft, but my go-to favorites are Rise of Nations and Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War. I think the territory influencing your resources in this sort is the last well done piece of the RTS puzzle.
There is just no reason to play anything other than Warcraft 3.
Tetrix0 Total Annhilation, Supreme Commander
Red Alert 2 Yuri's Revenge
I have been waiting for new Warcraft Strategy game, but will not happen because they care about money more than fans.
Good thing Warcraft 3 is more balanced than ever with this year's many patches.
Yes Warcraft 3 is a an awesome game. I only play campaign, but once a year playtrough the game.
RTS games got too complicated. More like work and less like fun.
Actually old games are often more work because of weaker pathing, less hotkeys and selection options and poor player feedback. I think people just think of more things as "work" because everything is so low effort and delivered on a golden plate these days. Look at how many people play awful mobile games where you just mash the screen.
They old games were more work to manage, but you could take your time at it...the AI was usually a pushover and the was no competitive multiplayer. TBH I think the Starcraft eSports scene is what ruined the genre. Suddenly everyone had to play at Korean 300 APM, which takes all the fun out of the game. No room for flavor or for big-picture strategy. Everything just devolved into who can micro faster.
this
ôkay so the solution is to have weaker AI and the game itself be a chore to play
Not more work, but more actual strategy, tactics, and logistics, rather than just speed mashing.
And now gaming tech has taken off to the point we could be making some real kick ass rts games.
OMG age of empires 2 hooked me up since 98, I'm afraid if I play it now it would hook me up again!
wtf are you saying
i mean the reason sc2 couldnt match it was because - and this is cming from the perspective of someone that played both games on quite the high competetive level - sc2 is more like a strategy game unlike sc1 in sc2 execution, micro, apm all these things matter not as your units have a stronger ai and their movement needs not be constantly supervised by the player so the decision on what units in the rock paper scissor model you went for is the *only thing* that matters unlike sc1 where micro was always more important the result for spectators is that fights in sc2 are broing to watch as their outcome is already clear in 90%+ of cases as they begin whereas in sc1 you could still see elegence and ability in the fights and the strategically speaking underdog could win by superior execution
Whats the name of this piano song? I know it but I can't remember... Can someone help me?
Can you pass me the name of the game that is presented at minute 18 at the end
I wasnt much of a blizzard fan back in the day- but still played them, I was ALWAYS more of a westwood fan. C&C 3 and Supreme Commander were my last hurrahs, but cant believe nobody has mentioned Generals game though. Good times.
I think the RTS genre is not less popular than before. It's just that the gaming community used to be a small group of dedicated and focused people who took gaming seriously. These people still exist and still play RTS game, otherwise, their wouldn't be any RTS still coming out (there's still a lot, you just need to search a little). The only thing that changed is that the casual mass market was introduced which makes the RTS community look smaller.
i still play Warzone 2100, anyone remember that game?
what was the final game displayed?? is it any good?
My all-time faves in the genre were Total Annihilation, the 1st 2 Age of Empires, Warcraft 2, and StarCraft.
Thank you for the video and question.
I think RTS needs creativity.
Up till now players made predefined units, and the game's question was what combinations of known units to build.
I think more can be done to offer the player to come up with their own designed units, and try out those designs against an enemy and environment. It could be like assembling lego blocks into a unit. The balance could be in a physics engine that takes into account things like weight, motor power, inertia, angle of impact, endurance, weather, temperature etc. One could name it design and execution.
To make it, it should be kept small and focussed on this narrow concept, in order to prove this new design and execution idea. In later versions one could add additional layers of complexity.
I still play Ground Control II from time to time, the best RTS im my opinion
Homeworld and Homeoworld 2 was immensly popular though, at least in my circles.
Also Metal Fatigue was innovative with designing units, capturing epic parts and 3 layers of combat. Cavern, ground and sky.
Hey guys what is the name of game which starts on 18:35? Coz I've found Achron but it looks totally diff.
Many thx
That's Grey Goo.
Supreme Commander left a mark and still alive after many years.
I loved the unique large scale maps and huge tech available with tach missles, naval cruisers w 5km ranged missle barrage etc., awesome game I still play. Where else can you throw a nuke 30km away on your enemy while sneaking in experimental spider walking fortresses fitted with 6 different wpn systems standing 100ft high???
This may be off topic, but I still play an old RTS game made in 2007 called Star Wars: Empire at War, it's a pretty great game, you should try it out.
I'd really like a game that is similar to Sacriface. It has a unique spin on RTS and I can see it easily becoming its own thing conceptually. I'm surprised that there was no RTS games that followed its model despite it being cult classic.
whats the last game he's playing in the video as he's talking?