Went through his channel again a couple of months ago, man I miss TB so much. Still remember his WTF is League of Legends that got me hooked to the game that ruined my life since late '10 early '11. Or when he talked about Section 8 : Prejudice and talks about how he doesn't understand how the game didn't get the love it deserved at the time while looking back at it, a game like that would've been such a hit if it was made in UE5 with modern technologies. And just the way he talks about the games he reviews is just great. Genuine, informative and just.. really damn amazing with content that is still good today while 5-10+ years is like an eternity in internet years.
Grant's right about ranked being more like two drunk toddlers fighting with pool noodles. Playing SC2 back in the WoL days, I once got into a TvT game where they spammed battlecruisers and I was using the "meta" counter of marines and vikings, and I somehow couldn't beat them, we stalemated for 2 hours, and it was literally the silliest game I ever had, and the one I remember the fondest. I love it when I find someone to play against and the strategy they use is just ridiculous, and even if I'm being boring in adhering to meta play, I can't finish it, it's the best. Having players teach me that meta doesn't really exist at a low skill level is the best.
That's awesome! I really loved that about WoL. I even made my own build with very specific timings where I rushed to nidus as quickly as possible and just made roaches appear in the enemy's base. I think my fondest memory though was ZvT, the T said "gg" prematurely, I massed 3-3 mutas because I had an island base and steamrolled him. It was so silly.
One thing that never gets mentioned: People pretend "casual" and "pro" are entirely seperate people, yet every single player started out in the casual category. No one said "Oh imma buy sc1 and make a pro career out of it". This is especially true if you want to attract the younger audience. Once you have converted those with a competitive personality profile sure they will be all WinterSC "I don't care if it's blue squares vs. red circles". But no one started like that.
Ran a survey myself for the RTS player bit. Funnily many thought they were "RTS" players but they weren't. They didn't know what the genre means. The younger audiences relate to RTS games as "Autobattler" variants instead.
Regarding Iron Harvest, the engine is absolutely relevant even if u only play the campaign. I'm a PvE only player in any RTS I play, and the Iron Harvest Campaign was absolutely miserable on account of how clunky everything is. If you just made a big mech army (because of course u would, they look cool af) and a-moved it across the map, they would split off 17 different ways, run into small enemy fortifications and then get killed. In fact, even just keeping everything moving in one group is a major challenge. Everything takes around 10 seconds to turn around, and they spend an eternity turning this way and that trying to figure out which direction to turn... The infantry units are a lot more responsive to control, but if u r making infantry in iron harvest, u r kinda defeating the purpose of the game.
I had been enjoying Iron Harvest multiplayer a lot due to its setting. What have struck me was that the game was clearly thought out as a single player experience but devs have copied so many solutions from other titles whitch were rather originaly meant for improving a multi mode. Gameplay always felt more arcady than immersive.
What I would like to see is something more like CoH Blitzkrieg Mod. The regular CoH games are somewhere between an RTS and a turn based game. Units can shoot each-other for ages. The Blitzkrieg mod is much closer to a regular RTS while still having the unique systems.
@@termitreter6545 that is true enough. But that example was more to highlight the fact that even the most basic "strategies" require a good and responsive engine. In the case of Iron Harvest, u'd have trouble a-moving a moderately sized army across half a city block... and gods forbid if there are any bridges or choke points...
Maybe because I played a lot of sc1 I never had problem with IH pathfinding, I took some clunkiest as a feature of diesel mechs. The game is slow anyway so you have enough time to fix your mistakes. I do remember train being very retarded in that one mission
RTS will never be as popular again as a percentage of gaming. However the amount on people playing games as a whole is staggeringly high right now, and so even if a small percentage of people play RTS games, it can still have a healthy community.
I think that we will see RTS evolve more to fit with the more casual audiences. Just like how fighting game become now. It's the only way for RTS to keep thriving and acquiring new players
When you say "Never" I think you're thinking too short term. Within the next 20 years? Probably not. But within the next 40-50? I'd bet RTS will have a renaissance. It's just inherently appealing, it's the maximum complexity you can have in a 1v1 game that is completed in one sitting.
I don't think that is the case TBH. How long it's been since we had a really good RTS game? Last I remember is the SC2 which released over 10 years ago. And SC2 release was BIG and sales were pretty damn high for that time's player counts. Also we had A LOT of RTS releases between 1990-2010 era which made the whole genre more popular. Also notice how LoL and DotA are racking absurd player counts. We know where those games originate from and there are a lot of similarities in view-camera and how units are managed. If Blizzard managed to make Warcraft 4 and managed to make it as good as Warcraft 3 but modernized everything, it would sell like crazy. Reforged alone saw a lot of attention for what is essentially a downgrade with higher poly but worse art-style models.
@@rnf123 I feel like sometimes it would take 1 extremely popular pro in mobas to try his time in RTS like warcraft or starcraft and a lot of people would flock in. Even if he did it just as a challange because you know he is super skilled in controlling 1 hero that can be very complicated, but have he tried to control more units? If for some reason in like few decades a lot of pro players would switch to mobas, I see no way why RTS wouldn't become extremely popular again.
Grant also has speedrun SC2, and regularly plays the hardest mods of the SC2 campaign, some of which makes Warcraft 3's hardest missions look casual. It's not like he's amazing in 1v1s, but he's amazing in dealing with pitched battles vs AI-controlled fortress bases. He's also raced an sc1 zerg campaign speedrun master in Total Recall (a mod for SC2 that aims to implement SC1's campaigns into SC2)
he is a mid master protoss, or was until he stopped playing 1v1 as well - so thats your top 2-3% of the sc2 playerbase as well - just cause he doesnt ladder anymore doesnt mean all that is gone - he was always and will always be a hardcore rts player - thats why he himself is calling him that ^^
Ah mid master, yeah that's really not bad then. I thought he only plays SP, but he just focuses on that because it's awesome content. Thanks for the info drop guys
@Slimurgical He played warcraft 3 campaigns on reforged graphics which meant bugged AI that wouldn't tech, wouldn't attack, etc. People kept telling him about this, but he ignored them and just wanted to "steal" the achievement of "deathless campaign run". That's when I lost all my respect for the guy.
@@sbonel3224Wait, let me get this straight. He plays one of the hardest RTS challenges where not only do not his own units die, but neither do his AI ally units, and a game that he even doesn't usually main, and you lost respect because he played the game at its most current content? My dude...
@@sandar9614 The most current content is bugged. Blizzard fucked up the AI along with many other things when they released reforged. Giantgrantgames was told repeatedly about this, but he chose to discard it.
I think the problem is that RTS games today are almost entirely being judged on the "Competitive scene". Feels like very few newer RTS games understand that the RTS genre used to focus on fun, storytelling and creativity, not E-sports. The competitive scene is a sideeffect of fun game design and trying to build every new RTS around it is putting the cart before the horse. The vast majority of Warcraft 3 players did not care about competitive WC3, most people probably barely even touch skirmish mode. It was all about the campaign at first and then later the custom maps. I used to watch competitive SC1 and SC2, but I would have never cared about that stuff if the campaign and the universe hadnt grabbed my interest. If starcraft 1 hadnt had those mind blowing cinematics and cool campaign maps back in the 90s, all us kids wouldnt have cared. I think its perfectly fine to have people invested in the competitive side, but you need to build an immersive, appealing and fun game first and then let the hardcore player base spring from the larger group.
Oh and remember legendary sound design of the 90s and 00s. The music, the voices of units, battle sounds it was so unique on a different level back then.
Warcraft 3 custom games is literally how I dived into RTS. Spending days playing pokemon, tds, nemesis, gladiator, run kitty run, kodo tags, the list never ends. A whole universe, inside a simple game. With a huge community. What else did we need? What else do we need?
same lol - never really cared for the official warcraft ladder games, just played custom games. Vamp Fire will always have a special place in my heart - beating those slayer timings kind of became a competition in itself
I always liked those mega campaigns custom maps where a lot of players would play GIANT battless and instead of having like 10 units which you have to micromanage you got like 100 units and you have to strategize more on macro scale than micro. Lordaeron the aftermath for example. It felt super epic and was cool even if you were losing sometimes. Ye it was not even as close in terms of skill as ladder but I found it fun
That was the whole point of GGG's video. In the conclusion he outlines that an RTS that will have a ton of user generated content will become popular. This is why 80% of players in SC2 and other RTS games prefer the campaign or arcade mode or cool mods. When devs give up the notion that they have to make games for the e-sport or competitive scene and focus more on campiangs, coop missions or just make the game modable, they will start winning back people to the strategy genre. This is why games like Skyrim, FO and other moddable RPGs became so hugely popular. It is also a smart decision as a dev because you will let the community create content for your game and you dont have to do anything than maintaining the game with updates and some minimalist content here and there. Blizz devs understood that and put arcade modes in both SC2 and WC3 and that ensured the longevity of their game far beyond a few years.
Look up the Warlords Battlecry series. It's an old franchise but it's the most straightforward blend of RTS and RPG out there. You have a persistent hero that levels up between matches and can even be a different race than the race you play as.
I love GGG, he does some awesome stuff with single-player RTS content. I think it would actually be really cool to see an RTS pro take a look at some of the stuff he's done because I'm sure you'd get a kick out of some of the mechanics and other small things he takes advantage of to make his runs work.
I love Warcraft III, it was literally the only game that I was playing back then. Played both campaigns more than once, ffas with 11 bots, did vs insane bots or teamed with them. I've played pretty much every custom game that was at least mildly popular Elemental TD, Vampirism, Troll Tribes, Pudgewars, Spellcraft, various RPGs, Uther Party, Asterix and Obelix/Naruto/One Piece shitty arenas or even trivia games like Weakest Link with unit sounds and obviously nolifed Dota. I even loved to make make stupid stuff in the editor. You know what I didn't touch? Any normal game against real human. Literally never faced human in the Warcraft III match in thousands of hours of gameplay.
I want to add about the biggest flaw of SC2 being it launching without the arcade being ready - the map editor in general launched very incomplete, with very little documentation, on top of being harder and more annoying to work with. In theory you could do a lot more with it, but as a veteran WC3 mapper it never felt like that to me - it felt like everything I could do relatively simply in WC3 took me far longer to do working with the new systems in SC2. I think this is why the majority of maps in SC2 were just rehashes of WC3 maps. The only people who could make maps in SC2 at all were those who had the technical knowledge to get through how dense the editor was, you couldn't just have a vision and slap it together with duct tape and superglue the way you could in WC3, so the most popular maps were all bereft of creativity.
This, very much this. I spent ages in WC3 map editor, and also put in my fair time in SC2 map editor, and the latter was horribly obtuse for things that were easy in WC3.
Tbh, I feel like the majority of players in SC2 probably never used the arcade, same with SC1. Most people just plaeyd the singleplayer campaign i think?
@@termitreter6545 Think so too. I feel like the campaign was the main appeal for most people... Which isnt uncommon for RTS games.. well, used to be that way anyway
With all due respect, most impressive maps were made in advanced (custom made) community wc3 editor with advanced functions and javascript code support and totally not in default map editor)
@@Stforv"most impressive maps" don't include Wintermaul TD, Tropical Tower Wars, Line Tower Wars, Footman Frenzy, Gladiator, X Hero Siege, Burbenog TD nor do they include the ginormous pile of player made campaigns (of varying quality, but I rest my case) ya don' need a supercomputer to make something really fun among the things that make a map real fun are: replayability absence (or at the very least a very low amount) of bugs and glitches and freezes and so on creativeness novelty polish And most of the maps or campaigns that are technically superior to all the others are just bland, boring, as raw as this frozen egg, uninspired, terrifically unbalanced, really laggy/buggy/glitchy or really unoptimised also there isn't a great way to post, share and edit maps or to comment on them (2/3ds of the maps in SC2 have dead comment sections and are lost in the confines of the 342nd page) oh *and the editor is absolutely horrendous to use.* Salt to the wound, sir? -Certainly.
When I got into RTS, nobody was telling me how hard it is :). And I primarily got into it playing campaign and LAN with friends. That is a huge difference to "well heres the ladder go have fun" imho.
here is the thing: rts games are not hard at all. it depends on how you want to play them and with what mindset. i am a normal working person mid 30s. i literally could not care less about a ranked title or meta or sweating to victory or practicing stuff and learning build orders. i just play the game because its fun. and being bad at it doesnt make the game less fun.
Owe. Grubby said nobody is shooting for a target audience of 32-39 and my instinctual though was "yeah thats kinda old" and then I realized ill be 35 this year. Also, fun facts about octopus theyre radically different as far as DNA and are actually one of the best examples of intelligence being separately evolved. We humans are quite closely related to most intelligent life on the planet. Most are mamals, like apes, orca, dolphin, pigs, etc. Then theres this odd niche of a few birds like parots or the corvid family, but even they are fairly close in the grand scheme. Octpopus are way separated on the evolutionary tree and thats what makes their evolution of intelligence so fascinsting. Their brain is almost spread throughout their body. Each leg kinda acts on it's own and reports to the body. Another fun fact is that if we assume there's some evolutionary mechanisms that drive any alien life that night exist, looking at what traits different species on earth evolved separately is a good indication of what alien life might also evolve. So claws are pretty likely, they've evolved separately many times. Intelligence has a lot less so its not a grrat indication its prevalent if theres alien life. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
Actually didn't expect you to watch the video when I suggested it, but I'm glad you did. That giant void ray at 1:06:30 was from the Real Scale Wings of Liberty mod. GGG and modders associated to him found a way to 'easily' modify the entire campaigns of SC2 and to implement those changes by using a custom campaign manager where you simply need to press 1 button to apply these changed to your client. He also runs fundraisers (Keyword: Twitch trolls Grant) to pay modders for creating new content for the SC2 scene. And he sparked his career by doing things that seemed somewhat impossible, like deathless Starcraft and Warcraft. The craziest challenge has to be his Pacifist Wings of Liberty run. The videos are also quite entertaining imo, and even though he ran reforged graphics, he absolutely shares your views on the reforged debacle and tackles it in his deathless run (especially in the undead campaign). Also, he isn't exactly a noob, he peaked at grandmaster in SC2, so he could at least hold his ground if you two ever were to clash.
WC3 gave birth to the top down survival shooter, which eventually led to red solstice appearing from mods like SWAT, Resident evil, Zombie survival etc. A shame Troll tribes, farmer vs hunter, vampirism, the thing, parasite etc didn't all get their own games.
RTS players also liking FPS games isn't that shocking when you consider they do share that same slow build up to brief frenetic encounters, though the FPS game has that happen relatively quickly while in an RTS it's usually more of a longer build up to it.
one mount skin in WoW made more money than all of starcraft 2. if you let greed make your decisions letting starcraft 2 be in maintanance is exactly the right call.
@@Chajos starcraft sold a ton and profits were great on it and having another franchise with millions of users is just another revenue channel. I know they want billions instead of millions, but that just shows how stupid the suits were.
@@markototevthat line of thinking only works if you think it's possible to expand forever. In reality, the bigger these companies get the more problems they have and as result more failures. Why put X amount of devs on low income game when you can move them to high income game, produce more content and more profit.
@@Nokiya This isn't how any business works. The goal IS to expand forever, but you don't expand vertically. Look at all of the biggest companies in the world - none of them continue to expand vertically forever, focusing entirely on one product, they branch out and acquire as many different properties and products as they can because appealing to a broad market is drastically more profitable. That's what Riot Games is doing now, making a whole bunch of different types of games (and a very successful show) in the League universe, and it's what Blizzard did in the past to become successful in the first place - WoW is literally a spinoff - but the company has been run by monkeys for a long time so all they can think of these days is cash grabs. Even after the success of their first new IP in decades, they immediately alienated the entire playerbase by making an unending seires of bad decisions and eventually abandoning it to pump out a cash grab sequel.
@@The-jy3yq Yep, HD came in 2013 and I think attack move was added with one of its DLCs. Yeah, among the competitive players, HD was considered inferior to the CD version with the latter being played via Voobly
Grant is one of the best things that happen to SC2 community. I play ladder but after while I am bored. However - nightmare mods, Mobius, realscale etc they make me enjoy the game on whole different level.
54:45 ha ha, me and my friend came up with the clickbait game title "2v2 naked medic hack" for Brood War. We played exclusively on what we thought was the best map (Sirocco), but because it wasn't Big Game Hunters or Lost Temple, no one joined it. Would you believe that the promise of naked medics drew in more teenagers?
Grubby, you begin making content with mods for wc3 and sc2 and your viewership will grow tenfold. You can use your big community to easily gather enough people to have a blast together on the most popular mods the community has to offer, because you are very easy going and these game are very fun and funny. Hope you try it out as you are already trying new games, but with a bit of familiarity from these RTS you are known for!
One thing I loved about RTS is the story campaign. The character that we have to follow as we command their troops. I've played Battle Realms, following the story of Kenji, played Red Alert, and several notable characters like Tanya, Warcraft 3's Ilidan, etc... I think having a character whose story we follow is a necessary component so that people would try RTS games. This is probably the reason why I never enjoy other RTS that much
Even when I go semi-hardcore and play competitively online, the roleplaying and spectacle are really important to keep me motivated to play long-term. The factions and units I play with have to be both competitively effective and also excite my imagination.
For me I feel like Dawn of War 2 and its micro management system is the kind of RTS that has the potential to become popular nowaday. Despite it being an RTS, its multiplayer mode somewhat has a similar feel to MOBA, it has distinguishable position-oriented roles like top,mid&bottom and each roles has its own different responsibility. And compared to other RTS, the number of units or in terms of this game;squads is relatively small so you would be controlling around 3-5 squads of units at once, which isnt too much to handle considering that the micro mechanics in this game arent as complex as MOBA. I also believe that the micro management that is the weapons&gears loadout present in campaign mode is what charming about this game and it gives the similar vibe to loadout system and build itemization in Shootings and MOBA, only if it got imported to multiplayer and its developers give this mode more love.
Dawn of War 2 was never as succesfull as the first DoW, I dont really get why people highlight it as much. The innovative apparoch to classic RTS' gameplay of the first game held longer than the seconds fast paced tactics gameplay. I dont think its a good idea to focus on MOBA aspects, those are just a different type of game. Thats just trying to conform to other genres, which probably is part of what killed a big part of the RTS genre. Heck, DoW3s multiplayer probably tried that, and completely failed.
I love DoW 2, but no way. It's extremely clunky, the tug of war gameplay also doesn't suit the core 1v1 pvp experience. I agree that the the future RTS needs heroes with RPG-like mechanics. But that essentially is what Warcraft 3 is, possibly with even more crisp and direct hero control like in Dota 2.
@@termitreter6545 I know.I never understand why Dawn of war 2 is so popular.Dawn of war 2 is more like a moba game , then DAwn of war 3 which I think is much better rts game
What got me to playing those RTS games were the story/campaign and spectacle. What made me continue playing those games were the gameplay, engine and mods. Even though I long stopped play Starcraft 2 multiplayer, I still play Coop mode and am having a blast with all the campaign mods the game has. Grant's community has made a pretty neat custom campaign manager that lets you install and switch campaign mods with a click of a button. Grubby brought up a good point I didn't realise - the reason Coop became such a huge success is partly because it builds off the campaign. You are already familiar with the Commanders and the units from what you experienced in the campaign. If Starcraft's story and campaign wasn't as enjoyable, and the game engine and gameplay wasn't as solid, Coop mode may not have turned out as well as it did. So while things like Coop may not necessarily be why people play an RTS, it can definitely help in the longevity of an RTS.
I find that forcing E-sport is difficult, while E-sports can keep the game alive for a very long time. Looking at SC2 and Age 2. Try to force it at the beginning can often kill a game. hero of the storm, To a certain degree overwatch and heartstone. To me the most memorable classic RTS are not its Multiplayer. Its the campaign, its the "arcade" modes, its the memorable voice acting. Every now and then i would still find myself quoting lines from peon. Hell when i first play Warcraft i was 6 year old in taiwan i didnt even understand English. But i still remember those silly lines.
I guess what I'm saying is. Have better campaign and a robust map editor. The map editor will never happen cuz no one wants to miss out on another dota anymore but please have a good campaign
I'm give one more example, CnC do people really remember Command and Conquer for it's hardcore 1v1? And it's aggressive rock paper scissors design? Or do people remember CnC for the B - movie cutscenes and it's extremely outdated stereotypes humor
And let's not forget that 1v1 is a very specific part of the multiplayer experience. Age Of Empires II, for example, is way more famous for free-for-alls with diplomacy and Supreme Commander, and now BAR, for their huge team battles.
I'm a little concerned that Stormgate is trying to force E-sports on us before the game is ready to become one. I'm seeing so many clickbait thumbnails about Stormgate tournaments, prize money, strategy guides, and I'm just... not interested yet because I want to begin my experience with the game with the campaign. Once I play through the campaign and learn how the game works myself, then seeing what incredible players can accomplish will be really impressive and interesting, but for now, I just don't have these comparison points so watching it as an esport completely falls flat for me. I highly doubt I'm alone in that regard. I just don't care about the multiplayer until I get a good feel for the game in singleplayer, so leading off with showmatches before the rest of the game is ready pushes me away from the game more than it makes me excited for it. I'm really hoping this is just a subpar marketing strategy instead of the game trying to remain relevant as an esport from now until everything else is actually ready, because if they're banking on that... it's not going to work.
User generated content was the whole point of GGG's video. In the conclusion he outlines that an RTS that will have a ton of user stuff or mods will become popular. This is why 80% of players in SC2 and other RTS games prefer the campaign or arcade mode or cool mods. When devs give up the notion that they have to make games for the e-sport or competitive scene and focus more on campaigns, coop missions or just make the game moddable, they will start winning back people to the strategy genre. This is why games like Skyrim, FO and other moddable RPGs became so hugely popular. It is also a smart decision as a dev because you will let the community create content for your game and you dont have to do anything than maintaining the game with updates and some minimalist content here and there. If your game is fun and has good controls and AI, people will make so much fun content, even DLC like mods for your game. However this cannot happen in a corporation controlled gaming industry, because all they care about is money and raising stock value. Only small devs can save the RTS genre... *Devs have to remember how to bring FUN back into video games* Blizz devs understood that and put arcade modes in both SC2 and WC3 and that ensured the longevity of their game far beyond a few years.
i think rts is in the same situation as c-rpgs and t-rpgs were a few years ago, so i think we can predict what will happen in the future, we are past the ''kickstart game releases only'' stage and smaller devs are actively making rts's without relying on crowdfunding, we are 1 xcom or 1 baldurs gate 3 away from a rts revival IMHO
Yeah XCOM is probably the best analogy since RTS needs the same treatment. A modernization and streamlining that makes the game more easily controllable and accessible but without feeling dumbed down.
I am fucking 49 years old and still playing WC 3. I also play Panzer, played AoE 3 online a lot, played freaking Dune II back in the time. Total War let me down so bad recently; so I played Dota 2. We exist :) Old people still play and we have more money than youngsters. Also… my 7 year old son loves to play Reforged. Hehe. Can’t beat Normal Computer in his dreams but he loves the idea! RTS and intelligent games have a market. Take heart!
The tryhard-players will always be outnumbered in hilarious fashion by the casuals. Because believe it or not, a lot of people just don't have the time, energy, or will to be a tryhard in something as relatively meaningless as a video game.
To me its not really about having time or energy... I just don want to to play anything competitively.I want to invest time in a cool RTS story, told through creative campaign map design. Im also fine with messing around with cool mechanics with friends.
@@aiugiamos3057I play games to unwind and destress, and I find high difficulty only increases my stress levels. Ergo, I play on the lowest difficulty setting possible and seek out games that aren't natively difficult. Everyone has a different perspective. You'd do well to respect that fact.
1:00:05 I can confirm as someone who used to love just tinkering with Warcraft 3's editor. Starcraft 2's editor was almost completely alien to me, completely killed my urge to make custom maps. Nothing was simple or straightforward or user-friendly; even creating a simple custom unit stretched my abilities to their limit.
Yeah, creating a new Unit was a complete nightmare. I remember that you needed: - A unit itself, which holds everything together and contains the stats - An actor for behaviour - A model - If wanted to modify the damage it deal you also need to create a weapon And the list goes on. While SC2' editor has 100x more flexibility than WC3's editor, it also caused the skill floor to raise by the same amount. In WC3 I can create new unit via CTRL+C, CTRL+V.
I think the reason shooters are higher than moba for current rts players is moba is just "bad" or "casual" strategy. As someone that grew up playing rts and switched to moba for a few years, I hated it. I don't want 4 randoms controlling my side with me in a strategy game.
The thing is people consider pubg, apex, overwarch as shooters which they are not. Tarkov and Counter-Strike more like that, maybe someone plays CoD or Battlefield multiplayer, but that's a relatively small audience. And I personally haven't seen decent single player shooter since 2014 Wolfenstein (not a fan of the new DOOM, but I can take it ok, still not that many games).
Very interesting perspective. I guess the reason why rts sandboxes have been so fun to play in in the past is because the units are so responsive in those games. The more control you have over unit interactions the more specific you can be in your creative UGC
Counterpoint: due to turn rates and worse overall netcode/older game engine WC3 controls much less smoothly than SC2 and the less creative you can be in UGC, but WC3 UGC innovated entire new genres while SC2's biggest custom maps have almost all just been rehashes of WC3 maps.
WarCraft 3 Campaign to this day has been my most cherished RTS experience, and I would be delighted to receive another experience like it. All the whimsical fun secrets and being able to build up my heroes and fallow their stories.👌 It was great. Man I miss the War3 Trigger editor too. As a wanna be game designer, this would be my dream project to work on 🤣 I dare not even attempt to make an RTS on my own though, because I know just how much work needs to go into it to make it both feel great to play and be fleshed out. Huge undertaking, so mad respect for projects like Stormgate.
As to the difficultly keeping people out, I played the Starcraft demo levels because my friends did because they liked WC2 and we would cheat-code through the campaign there just to watch the cutscenes and story. When SC2 was announced I was thrilled to know what would become of the world, despite how little of the story I actually knew as a kid. The setting had a mood and the story kept me around.
The problem with every new RTS that comes out is that they focus way too hard on a trying to be an esport gutting the experience in some vague, vain attempt at hyper balance for koreans to 1v1 20 games a day to climb a ladder. WC3 has so many units, heroes, and other things that just aren't balanced for 1v1, but WC3 also has 2v2 and 4v4, and 4v4 is timeless fun. However every unit in WC3 is simply fun to use, balance is about keeping things dynamic and not allowing for oppressive strategies (Ironically something Broodwar and SC2 fails at despite everyone trying to copy those) The bigger thing though is you need a campaign, and that campaign has to be fun, engaging, and more a sandbox to try things than a hardcore simulation of multiplayer, but also still primarily being based on the multiplayer unit base. For example Warcraft 3 teaches the players how to play Warcraft 3 in general, giving you new units to play with every mission and letting you play around, with only a handful of 'hard' missions that require you to do specific things, such as beating a a timer, or holding out. Contrast this to Starcraft 2 where more than half of the units you get in the campaign just do not show up in multiplayer. Also catering to korean ladder grinders has its own issues, when every game is just 3 minute rushes at low ladder and you need to get to higher tiers of the ladder before you can start having real games (And even in the pro scene 'a real game of starcraft 2' being a common phrase referencing to the fact that most games end in early game cheese). Warcraft 3 had its own rushes for sure, but those were noobish and a medium level player can easily hold against a tower rush because it was simply a slower paced experience with higher unit quality and anti-snowball mechanics like exp. Your game should be fun for 1v1 multiplayer of course, but it should also be fun for 4v4, campaign, custom games, ect, and thats what modern RTS developers keep forgetting, im sure a ton of people remember being sweaty on C&C Red alert 3, but I assure you more people remember playing the hilarious campaign with the absolute treasure that was Tim Curry.
The problem as I see it as a long time RTS enjoyer and also a moba enjoyer, is that Winning a close match in a online RTS match gives you a pretty insane high, but the high you get from winning a good moba match is very comparable only slightly less exciting but the work it takes to play a rts online in a competetive environment is very high while a moba requires less direct manual work for nearly the same high. Mobas are still one of the hardest genres to play and get good at but RTS is like moba but you have to play 3 heroes at once and also hit 100 hotkeys a minute.
Yeah, we did that after shool))) bringing your own net cable, ah nostalgic) then the LAN era started and it was beautiful, no need to freakin 24/7 internet connection to play diablo 2 single or with friends=)
@@DNYLNY not in the late 90's. That would also cost money, while the computer you had at home (and basically literally every family had) was free to use :).
Grubby, i can highly suggest you his channel too. its one of the most unique and fun sc2 content creators in ways. he is mostly doing challenge runs of campaigns and stuff like: memorizing and literally trying to play through a campaign blindfolded and stuff like that, its kind of crazy with how cheesy and unconventional ways he comes up with to make something work in a way that wasnt intended like that
Dawn of War 1 - Unification Mod has 2 millions downloads now and today it's 1000+ downloads. The game is basically ''dead'' because it was no longer supported by devs and has big competitive scene but it was kept alive by modders.
Age of Empire I and II campaigns were glorious. I don't remember anything about III and didn't play IV, but the campaigns are what made me come back to these games over the years time and time again.
About stormgate, they are actually planning to have heros involved in their 3v3 mode, whereas 1v1 won't have heros. I'm not sure about 2v2 and 4v4 but 1v1 and 3v3 are going to be their main focus points when it comes to balance and esports.
I think part of WoW's massive success even though its not an RTS it was derived from an RTS. This gave the world so much more depth even on day 1 of the launch of WoW. I think LoL and Riot's League MMO will do exactly the same, with the standing lore and it will lead into that wow factor in their MMO where you can visit all of these locations/characters from the MOBA and experience it first hand. How an RTS can pull this off, may be yet to be seen, it's gotta really drag us in with immersion and be enticing to play, learn, discover and share.
And also original WoW looked and felt like it was a great mod/map made in wc3 editor.. And now it's like "ok, another random loot item with a +100 strength, whatever.."
you want to categorize rts games? classic RTS - C&C, warcraft 2, KKnD, Dune, Act of War, Age of Empires small scale RTS - iron harvest, Company of Heroes, Dawn of War high execution RTS - Starcraft 2, Warcraft 3 large scale RTS - Total Annihilation, Supreme Commander, Planetary Annihilation, Ashes of the Singularity, Sanctuary
I do believe that older Moba players are starting to move back to RTS. I have been a GM-Challenger level league player for 5-7 years and I want to move back to RTS. The problem I find is actually the lack of competitive tutorials or 1v1 guides inside the game itself and also the big difference between campaign units and multiplayer units. I am talking here about SC2. I love the game, the engine and the movement feels really smooth, but having no idea what is required to get into multiplayer without watching youtube tutorials hurts the immersion and it feels like the level to entry is really high which I think is more of an illusion than a fact. If you actually play the multiplayer, a lot of people are really struggling as well . The things that MOBA do different for sure is that multiplayer starts from the beginning and that creates a sense of community really fast. RTS has the problem of being 1v1 focused, which is great for competitive but it really hurts people that want to play against other players but dont want such a steep learning curve. A functioning 2v2 or 3v3 mode would really help this for returning moba players I believe.
In Circle Empires, which is a casual RTS made by a very small team, the first part had only single player, the average player age was defenitely below 20 and the sequel which added multiplayer primarily and a lot of single player content ended up having 50% of people playing at least some multiplayer.
When they announced Reforged I thought they will add Coop Missions. Would have worked perfectly for WC3 with the Hero System. This could have been a Gold Mine for Blizz. But they fudged it up so much... amazing. I assume Blizz acutally hates money.
I dislike the argument that matches at low level are like two toddlers fighting with poolnoodels. Because for the players, it still feels very stressful and intense. So yes, when starting RTS are probably the most overwhelming and difficult games.
34:50 sorry Grubby, but that's bullshit. Every game should be held to a most basic standard of functionality. Don't insult casuals with thinking they will be fine with something, that is barely "good enough". If an RTS isn't responsive, the units move is clunky, the AI is bad, and mechanics are unintuitive (like with the cover system example), then why play it?
@@GrubbyTalks That depends. I cut my teeth on custom games in Warcraft 3 from around 2006 to 2018. Hero Line Wars, Battleships, Battletanks, Eras Zombie Invasion, Europa Universalis, Evolution Tag, Angel Arena, Civilization Wars and many others. I was quite good in some of them, and I definitely spent a lot of time playing them, but I very rarely played normal games, like 1v1 or 4v4. Would that make me casual, or hardcore? But even casual players can feel, when something is not working, when units have delays, when pathing is wrong, when AI breaks. You don't have to be Maru to intuitively know, when a game is just not right. All these custom games could work because Warcraft 3 felt good to play, crisp, responsive and clean. Everything on top it was built on already existing systems. So yes, if you can consider me a casual (I definitely am now, seeing how I haven't touched Warcraft 3 or any other RTS for a few years now), we did care. That's why even custom games and custom campaigns weren't one and done, they had versions with tweaks, rebalances and bug fixes. If players didn't care, they wouldn't give feedback to authors.
On the point of having a good/powerful editor, in the case of another game which is not RTS. Hytale. It was announced in 2018 and still hasn't released and the main reason people are still waiting patiently for it, or are hyped about it at all, is the editors they are promising. They are promising to release tools that will allow you to make pretty much anything you can imagine. Even freer than WC3 World Editor because it will also come with it's own model editor built in. To top it off, its a sandbox game made by the studio responsible for one of Minecraft's most popular servers, Hypixel. Basically, its Minecraft without JavaScript's inherit stupidity as a language and without the baggage of having to learn it in order to mod the game. The editor isn't just an addon either, it's their main selling point for the game. So, not only will a good editor extend the games lifespan by decades, it will make people _wait to even play the game,_ for at least 6 years, and counting. As far as I know, it's not wven slated for release this year. To be completely honest, I don't even care if the game is actually good, just as long as the editor is as powerful and easy to use as they promise. Judging by the external play testing they did a little while back, it _will_ be a good game, so I'm just making a point, not saying I think the game's gonna be bad (the devs are responsible for Hypixel after all, they know how to entertain).
I love warcraft 3 arcade/custom maps especially when garena was a thing I spent hours playing custom campaign, anime parody maps lke anime arena and bleach vs one piece so I definitrely agree to grant that the editor is very important the amount of custom campaign maps I have in my WC3 folder is insane I even tried to create my own maps and it was fun learning the editor and WC3 editor is very good at its time
I'm not so sure about the MOBA argument. I played dota / dota 2 forever, and played semi competitive wc3 in the early 2000's. I constantly asked people about wc3 ladder and basically NONE of them were former ladder players. I think the the custom map players were basically a completely unique set. Even meeting other gamers in the wild. If they mentioned wc3 at some point it's more likely to be for mods (not just dota. Tower defense was huge as well)
Another semi-big game genre was first "person RTS". Like Natural Selection 2. Where you could have one RTS player and the rest play the units in a 1st person style, shooter. Its was quite fun.
talking about iconic rts games. total annihilation, supreme commander (very passionate and active community to this day), homeworld. heck, what about sacrifice? a super unique take on the genre played in third person.
30:05 The issue is also if there are no educational resources, just laddering will make you learn wrong because you don't know by what metric you are winning so you create gimmicky strats without educational resources.
4:51 is important. Everyone I know got into Warcraft and StarCraft first, then tried ladder. Then settled on custom games. It wasn’t fun. Winning is fun, no matter what the mechanics are. People will relentlessly defend any mechanic that they have a competitive advantage in. So I do not think competitive multiplayer was the primary draw at the time. Even today, games like HoI4 are largely single player experiences. The genre doesn’t have to be beholden to a specific set of mechanics in my opinion.
Grubby I would like to tell you an old secret that I have kept to myself for over 20 years that almost nobody knows... You learn this trick in the first level of the undead campaign, because I was curious I found out how to get to these places. The trick is that you can attack TREES with the workers, peons and ghouls, so that this trick doesn't blow up I did a normal hit so that the model has wood on his shoulder but the rest of the hits were not mining but attacking. So you can strategically reach a creep with a gold mine faster or kill special red creeps with a tower you once showed it with the peon at the golem with my version it would go faster. You can also work your way into the forest behind the enemy lines to surprise them with towers or something else. Greetings from an old gamer from the old days A.K.D
25:35 Zerg has to use more inferior units for the first half of the game, until ravagers came out anyway. And queen production emulates the other race production style. So Zerg practices the skills of all races. You can use nydus worm like a force field. You can hatchery>pool block people. Your workers die whenever you make a structure.
For casual entertainment, there is not much I like more than listening to two smart people talk about something. This fit the bill. Thank you. (I had already listened to the commented on video before I watched this one.)
That's why I count the history of gaming by the incursion of a new game mode. We get a new game mode, it gets popular, we get tired, the game mode goes back to being niche then a new game mode emerges. So it's true that we are in the age of battle royale, roguelites, hero shooters and dark souls like, but it doesn't mean all RTSs are going to fail and nobody plays them anymore.
I really agree with that last sentiment, sandbox is so crucial for a rts to be fun. I've played countless if hours of wc3, but I can't remember a single time I've played the game outside of the custom maps
around 20:00 this was a huge issue (probably still is) in MMOs. I am not thru the video yet, but I hope he recognizes that a game DOES need to cater to both audiences. The hardcore players are who bring casual players back in over time so the game actually sustains after launch. If you have 10 games you own and want to play one, you're more likely to hop into the one you have a friend in because he's on every day
Late to the party, thank you for the video. I am a solo player who loves 'Skirmish' modes! I have not played RTS multiplay in over 2 decades and I rarely touch campaigns. But I intend to play Tempest Rising's campaign
With regards to demographics, I wonder how many people would stick around longer for Starcraft 2 if the developers started using the map editor to push down stream some custom challenges once a month. If that works (I have a feeling it would), it would be a no brainer, the editor is for fans, but it doesn't mean they can't integrate it themselves in their workflow. Same thing for Warcraft 3.
They wanted to use it to sell user made mods as a 0 effort rentseeking revenue stream for themselves. When that didn't work out they practically abandoned the arcade and overall support for the editor. Blizzard just isn't the kind of company to give their players anything for free anymore.
I remember my entry into the world in rts: it was Empire Earth . Not WC3 Not AoE. Why? Because of the Fantasy of building huge armies and rising through the ages. I had 0 intrest in tactics and getting better at the game. That all came way later. So my guess is: There is no entry point for new players that have never played an RTS. All the existing "successfull" RTS have one thing in common: They got an interesting twist besides being an RTS game. WC3 and Spellforce have one of the most interesting fantasy worlds. SC2 has the best feel and scify world and in AoE you rise through the ages, can build massive armies and build walls. So as somebody that has nothing to do with RTS games you get an entry point. BUT! WC3 e. g. is too unforgiving for new players. You cannot learn the game without studying some guides. Plus you can't fullfill the fantasy of a huge fantasy army (thats why total war warhammer got so pupular). I really don't like to say it but Stormgate will not get any kind of big success. Even if the campaign is extremely good, it has no unique selling point to offer. Playing the game feels more clunky than SC2 and there is no real RTS-fantasy that you can satisfy with that game. What to do: flatten the learning curve. Not by making games more simple but by fusing fun game concepts with competative play in a way that a new RTS-player gets from using cheats to create a crazy army to choosing the right build order to counter his opponent.
Totally agree! All I did as a kid was play wc3 custom maps; rpg, survival, tower defense all except dota lol Though what got me hooked with the game is art direction and campaign. So I think those 2 are also important. RTS's, especially competitive 1v1 is hard to monetize because readability is everything so having skins for units or buildings would feel bad. But I feel like if there was an rts with good custom map maker and monetization like dota 2 with hero items so you can show them in custom maps it would be both profitable and fun to play.
After playing both game, I’d say aoe4 is better. The issue here is the core aoe player base have played the same game for 20 years and already pass the difficult learning curve of aoe2. Now they try the newer game and don’t enjoy it because it’s out of their comfort zone
Spellforce 3 + its expansions did okay, and were completely focussed on single player. That's also an RTS-RPG. That game at least did much better than gray goo and ashes of the singularity. Not nearly as well as AoE IV though.
Why people don't play multiplayer in RTS. The problems are Smurfs - Sweating - Game design is = You built this building so I will build this building that counters you. - Multiplayer consists of using game mechanics and cheese to beat other pleyer = encircle, tower rush, etc. When i boot up an RTS game i like to build mixed armies and watch them clash in an epic battle not to do 150 apm to beat someone because my unit was made to counter their unit.
that's part of strategy aspect of these games. adapt to one's strategy and counter. if you expect one type of game everytime then you arent built for that genre
@@micasa8421 the 80% aka people who play campaign for few hours and jump to other game because they never were into it, while people who actually enjoy "starcraftlike" RTS play multiplayer. If you want to play slow paced clunky strategy game with braindead AI just play something else there are plenty of titles which cater to that audience.
The success of co-op commanders in SC2 is because the mode is best combination of all of the most loves things in the RTS world: starcraft engine and gameplay, command and conquer generals gameplay, co-op, non-competitive but fun challenge and the un-shameful arsenal of mass destruction weapons.
1:00:36 No. It's quite easy, you don't have to know any language and as long as you can use logic, you can program in both WC3 and SC2 with simple UI (which is downside for someone with experience, tbh).
12:50 'How do we help these people stick around' The answer, was monthly missions. That would be content. People love singleplayer, give them more singleplayer, obviously. Now, co-op was their answer to this, trying to bait people into friending randoms to play or getting their friends to play. Which worked til new content dried up. That was too high budget, the flashiness and excitement of new heroes was good. Replayability was good. But it had no single-player option. The scale was larger than it needed to be I mean. Granted they tried this with Nova Covert ops. But I think the missions in that could have been released longer over time for example, and more gradually with more quality of interactions and less quantity of unit interactions, right. That was a good idea. But, she was, like Hillary Clinton, who wants to play Hillary Clinton as a Sniper lmao. Also, it could've been shifted to a monthly thing, $5 a month, or $30 upfront. Then, you still owe a final mission for the character when it drops off, then announce a new character right after, so people go from 'should I cancel?' to 'oh shit I'm hyped again'.
4:30 look no further than Assassins Creed where around 90% of the games start by the MC having someone close to him die, so MC tries to find the culprit behind some secret organisation and needs to join the assassins to finally get that kill done. xd
I've checked some games of 9-bit Army, it looks cool too. Even if they don't make it to that competitive scene I'm pretty happy with all the RTS coming out or announced in the oven recently ~
sc2 being released over 10 + years ago, still amazes me with the graphic it has and the gameplay of each campaign, they are all different and have different mechanics. In wings of liberty, you had the units for free and just payed for the upgrades for them, on heart of the swarm, you had the choice to either go for one type of unit evolution or the other and you would try those evolutions so you could decide which one suited your gameplay and for legacy of the void every unit wasn´t fully "operational" until you reached certain points in the story, each of them had different mechanics and abilities, etc. the numbers it has and the development behind till this day, for me is still amazing.
I disagree that there are no future young RTS players. My kid is in 3rd grade and he loves microing units and trying to be as fast as he can. He is trying to compete with a bunch of 20 year olds, and while he gets very frustrated when he is out-microed, he is sufficiently motivated to practice specific micro sequences. It's crazy. Future RTS gamer.
one thing I dislike with rts is the whole "build more workers to get more recurses". I'd rater see that you start with a fixed amount of workers (that has a respawn timer if ded). That way you can still go after them, but you get to choose how to allocate them, but games dont get drawn out because of both sides being too large machines. Also, you get to stay playing the game right away, instead of the whole build up economy zzz phase.
CnC3 Kane's Wrath is the best RTS when it comes to actual gameplay (Even though I am not a fan of how buildings are built) and I don't think anything can beat it.
I read the title as "The next major RTS will fail unless Grubby reacts", and I didn't even question it. It made sense.
😂
RIP Totalbiscuit, he’s sorely missed these days
Went through his channel again a couple of months ago, man I miss TB so much. Still remember his WTF is League of Legends that got me hooked to the game that ruined my life since late '10 early '11. Or when he talked about Section 8 : Prejudice and talks about how he doesn't understand how the game didn't get the love it deserved at the time while looking back at it, a game like that would've been such a hit if it was made in UE5 with modern technologies.
And just the way he talks about the games he reviews is just great. Genuine, informative and just.. really damn amazing with content that is still good today while 5-10+ years is like an eternity in internet years.
Loved watching his stuff. First guy I reguarly watched on both UA-cam and Twitch
I miss the CoOptional Podcast too...RIP
RIP, we did not heed his words, now we reap the trash that we sowed
Grant's right about ranked being more like two drunk toddlers fighting with pool noodles. Playing SC2 back in the WoL days, I once got into a TvT game where they spammed battlecruisers and I was using the "meta" counter of marines and vikings, and I somehow couldn't beat them, we stalemated for 2 hours, and it was literally the silliest game I ever had, and the one I remember the fondest. I love it when I find someone to play against and the strategy they use is just ridiculous, and even if I'm being boring in adhering to meta play, I can't finish it, it's the best.
Having players teach me that meta doesn't really exist at a low skill level is the best.
That's awesome! I really loved that about WoL. I even made my own build with very specific timings where I rushed to nidus as quickly as possible and just made roaches appear in the enemy's base.
I think my fondest memory though was ZvT, the T said "gg" prematurely, I massed 3-3 mutas because I had an island base and steamrolled him. It was so silly.
One thing that never gets mentioned: People pretend "casual" and "pro" are entirely seperate people, yet every single player started out in the casual category. No one said "Oh imma buy sc1 and make a pro career out of it". This is especially true if you want to attract the younger audience. Once you have converted those with a competitive personality profile sure they will be all WinterSC "I don't care if it's blue squares vs. red circles". But no one started like that.
Ran a survey myself for the RTS player bit. Funnily many thought they were "RTS" players but they weren't. They didn't know what the genre means.
The younger audiences relate to RTS games as "Autobattler" variants instead.
Regarding Iron Harvest, the engine is absolutely relevant even if u only play the campaign. I'm a PvE only player in any RTS I play, and the Iron Harvest Campaign was absolutely miserable on account of how clunky everything is. If you just made a big mech army (because of course u would, they look cool af) and a-moved it across the map, they would split off 17 different ways, run into small enemy fortifications and then get killed. In fact, even just keeping everything moving in one group is a major challenge. Everything takes around 10 seconds to turn around, and they spend an eternity turning this way and that trying to figure out which direction to turn...
The infantry units are a lot more responsive to control, but if u r making infantry in iron harvest, u r kinda defeating the purpose of the game.
I had been enjoying Iron Harvest multiplayer a lot due to its setting. What have struck me was that the game was clearly thought out as a single player experience but devs have copied so many solutions from other titles whitch were rather originaly meant for improving a multi mode. Gameplay always felt more arcady than immersive.
What I would like to see is something more like CoH Blitzkrieg Mod. The regular CoH games are somewhere between an RTS and a turn based game. Units can shoot each-other for ages. The Blitzkrieg mod is much closer to a regular RTS while still having the unique systems.
Tbh a-moving units over the entirety of the mat kinda takes away the strategy.
@@termitreter6545 that is true enough. But that example was more to highlight the fact that even the most basic "strategies" require a good and responsive engine. In the case of Iron Harvest, u'd have trouble a-moving a moderately sized army across half a city block... and gods forbid if there are any bridges or choke points...
Maybe because I played a lot of sc1 I never had problem with IH pathfinding, I took some clunkiest as a feature of diesel mechs. The game is slow anyway so you have enough time to fix your mistakes. I do remember train being very retarded in that one mission
RTS will never be as popular again as a percentage of gaming. However the amount on people playing games as a whole is staggeringly high right now, and so even if a small percentage of people play RTS games, it can still have a healthy community.
and $500k starcraft 2 tournaments. RTS players before 2010 would have killed for that
I think that we will see RTS evolve more to fit with the more casual audiences. Just like how fighting game become now. It's the only way for RTS to keep thriving and acquiring new players
When you say "Never" I think you're thinking too short term. Within the next 20 years? Probably not. But within the next 40-50? I'd bet RTS will have a renaissance.
It's just inherently appealing, it's the maximum complexity you can have in a 1v1 game that is completed in one sitting.
I don't think that is the case TBH. How long it's been since we had a really good RTS game? Last I remember is the SC2 which released over 10 years ago. And SC2 release was BIG and sales were pretty damn high for that time's player counts. Also we had A LOT of RTS releases between 1990-2010 era which made the whole genre more popular. Also notice how LoL and DotA are racking absurd player counts. We know where those games originate from and there are a lot of similarities in view-camera and how units are managed.
If Blizzard managed to make Warcraft 4 and managed to make it as good as Warcraft 3 but modernized everything, it would sell like crazy. Reforged alone saw a lot of attention for what is essentially a downgrade with higher poly but worse art-style models.
@@rnf123 I feel like sometimes it would take 1 extremely popular pro in mobas to try his time in RTS like warcraft or starcraft and a lot of people would flock in. Even if he did it just as a challange because you know he is super skilled in controlling 1 hero that can be very complicated, but have he tried to control more units? If for some reason in like few decades a lot of pro players would switch to mobas, I see no way why RTS wouldn't become extremely popular again.
Grant also has speedrun SC2, and regularly plays the hardest mods of the SC2 campaign, some of which makes Warcraft 3's hardest missions look casual. It's not like he's amazing in 1v1s, but he's amazing in dealing with pitched battles vs AI-controlled fortress bases.
He's also raced an sc1 zerg campaign speedrun master in Total Recall (a mod for SC2 that aims to implement SC1's campaigns into SC2)
he is a mid master protoss, or was until he stopped playing 1v1 as well - so thats your top 2-3% of the sc2 playerbase as well - just cause he doesnt ladder anymore doesnt mean all that is gone - he was always and will always be a hardcore rts player - thats why he himself is calling him that ^^
Ah mid master, yeah that's really not bad then. I thought he only plays SP, but he just focuses on that because it's awesome content. Thanks for the info drop guys
@Slimurgical He played warcraft 3 campaigns on reforged graphics which meant bugged AI that wouldn't tech, wouldn't attack, etc. People kept telling him about this, but he ignored them and just wanted to "steal" the achievement of "deathless campaign run". That's when I lost all my respect for the guy.
@@sbonel3224Wait, let me get this straight. He plays one of the hardest RTS challenges where not only do not his own units die, but neither do his AI ally units, and a game that he even doesn't usually main, and you lost respect because he played the game at its most current content? My dude...
@@sandar9614 The most current content is bugged. Blizzard fucked up the AI along with many other things when they released reforged. Giantgrantgames was told repeatedly about this, but he chose to discard it.
I think the problem is that RTS games today are almost entirely being judged on the "Competitive scene". Feels like very few newer RTS games understand that the RTS genre used to focus on fun, storytelling and creativity, not E-sports. The competitive scene is a sideeffect of fun game design and trying to build every new RTS around it is putting the cart before the horse.
The vast majority of Warcraft 3 players did not care about competitive WC3, most people probably barely even touch skirmish mode. It was all about the campaign at first and then later the custom maps.
I used to watch competitive SC1 and SC2, but I would have never cared about that stuff if the campaign and the universe hadnt grabbed my interest. If starcraft 1 hadnt had those mind blowing cinematics and cool campaign maps back in the 90s, all us kids wouldnt have cared.
I think its perfectly fine to have people invested in the competitive side, but you need to build an immersive, appealing and fun game first and then let the hardcore player base spring from the larger group.
Oh and remember legendary sound design of the 90s and 00s. The music, the voices of units, battle sounds it was so unique on a different level back then.
Warcraft 3 custom games is literally how I dived into RTS. Spending days playing pokemon, tds, nemesis, gladiator, run kitty run, kodo tags, the list never ends. A whole universe, inside a simple game. With a huge community. What else did we need? What else do we need?
same lol - never really cared for the official warcraft ladder games, just played custom games. Vamp Fire will always have a special place in my heart - beating those slayer timings kind of became a competition in itself
I always liked those mega campaigns custom maps where a lot of players would play GIANT battless and instead of having like 10 units which you have to micromanage you got like 100 units and you have to strategize more on macro scale than micro. Lordaeron the aftermath for example. It felt super epic and was cool even if you were losing sometimes. Ye it was not even as close in terms of skill as ladder but I found it fun
That was the whole point of GGG's video. In the conclusion he outlines that an RTS that will have a ton of user generated content will become popular. This is why 80% of players in SC2 and other RTS games prefer the campaign or arcade mode or cool mods. When devs give up the notion that they have to make games for the e-sport or competitive scene and focus more on campiangs, coop missions or just make the game modable, they will start winning back people to the strategy genre.
This is why games like Skyrim, FO and other moddable RPGs became so hugely popular. It is also a smart decision as a dev because you will let the community create content for your game and you dont have to do anything than maintaining the game with updates and some minimalist content here and there.
Blizz devs understood that and put arcade modes in both SC2 and WC3 and that ensured the longevity of their game far beyond a few years.
I remember that my last years of dota 2 was entirely on custom games and only a few times in regular dota 2....
RTS+RPG is exactly right. That's EXACTLY what I want. I've had an empty hole in my heart ever since Warcraft 3.
All SpellForce games will fill that hole like Fukuoka!
I can relate. Ever since Warcraft 3 and battle for middle earth 2 and StarCraft 1 & 2. I’ve had that same hole lol
@@royasturias1784 these people just wanna shout
Look up the Warlords Battlecry series. It's an old franchise but it's the most straightforward blend of RTS and RPG out there. You have a persistent hero that levels up between matches and can even be a different race than the race you play as.
I love GGG, he does some awesome stuff with single-player RTS content. I think it would actually be really cool to see an RTS pro take a look at some of the stuff he's done because I'm sure you'd get a kick out of some of the mechanics and other small things he takes advantage of to make his runs work.
I love Warcraft III, it was literally the only game that I was playing back then. Played both campaigns more than once, ffas with 11 bots, did vs insane bots or teamed with them. I've played pretty much every custom game that was at least mildly popular Elemental TD, Vampirism, Troll Tribes, Pudgewars, Spellcraft, various RPGs, Uther Party, Asterix and Obelix/Naruto/One Piece shitty arenas or even trivia games like Weakest Link with unit sounds and obviously nolifed Dota. I even loved to make make stupid stuff in the editor.
You know what I didn't touch? Any normal game against real human. Literally never faced human in the Warcraft III match in thousands of hours of gameplay.
I want to add about the biggest flaw of SC2 being it launching without the arcade being ready - the map editor in general launched very incomplete, with very little documentation, on top of being harder and more annoying to work with. In theory you could do a lot more with it, but as a veteran WC3 mapper it never felt like that to me - it felt like everything I could do relatively simply in WC3 took me far longer to do working with the new systems in SC2. I think this is why the majority of maps in SC2 were just rehashes of WC3 maps. The only people who could make maps in SC2 at all were those who had the technical knowledge to get through how dense the editor was, you couldn't just have a vision and slap it together with duct tape and superglue the way you could in WC3, so the most popular maps were all bereft of creativity.
This, very much this. I spent ages in WC3 map editor, and also put in my fair time in SC2 map editor, and the latter was horribly obtuse for things that were easy in WC3.
Tbh, I feel like the majority of players in SC2 probably never used the arcade, same with SC1. Most people just plaeyd the singleplayer campaign i think?
@@termitreter6545 Think so too. I feel like the campaign was the main appeal for most people... Which isnt uncommon for RTS games.. well, used to be that way anyway
With all due respect, most impressive maps were made in advanced (custom made) community wc3 editor with advanced functions and javascript code support and totally not in default map editor)
@@Stforv"most impressive maps" don't include Wintermaul TD, Tropical Tower Wars, Line Tower Wars, Footman Frenzy, Gladiator, X Hero Siege, Burbenog TD nor do they include the ginormous pile of player made campaigns (of varying quality, but I rest my case)
ya don' need a supercomputer to make something really fun
among the things that make a map real fun are:
replayability
absence (or at the very least a very low amount) of bugs and glitches and freezes and so on
creativeness
novelty
polish
And most of the maps or campaigns that are technically superior to all the others are just bland, boring, as raw as this frozen egg, uninspired, terrifically unbalanced, really laggy/buggy/glitchy or really unoptimised
also there isn't a great way to post, share and edit maps or to comment on them (2/3ds of the maps in SC2 have dead comment sections and are lost in the confines of the 342nd page)
oh *and the editor is absolutely horrendous to use.* Salt to the wound, sir? -Certainly.
When I got into RTS, nobody was telling me how hard it is :). And I primarily got into it playing campaign and LAN with friends. That is a huge difference to "well heres the ladder go have fun" imho.
here is the thing: rts games are not hard at all. it depends on how you want to play them and with what mindset.
i am a normal working person mid 30s.
i literally could not care less about a ranked title or meta or sweating to victory or practicing stuff and learning build orders.
i just play the game because its fun. and being bad at it doesnt make the game less fun.
Owe. Grubby said nobody is shooting for a target audience of 32-39 and my instinctual though was "yeah thats kinda old" and then I realized ill be 35 this year.
Also, fun facts about octopus theyre radically different as far as DNA and are actually one of the best examples of intelligence being separately evolved. We humans are quite closely related to most intelligent life on the planet. Most are mamals, like apes, orca, dolphin, pigs, etc. Then theres this odd niche of a few birds like parots or the corvid family, but even they are fairly close in the grand scheme. Octpopus are way separated on the evolutionary tree and thats what makes their evolution of intelligence so fascinsting. Their brain is almost spread throughout their body. Each leg kinda acts on it's own and reports to the body.
Another fun fact is that if we assume there's some evolutionary mechanisms that drive any alien life that night exist, looking at what traits different species on earth evolved separately is a good indication of what alien life might also evolve. So claws are pretty likely, they've evolved separately many times. Intelligence has a lot less so its not a grrat indication its prevalent if theres alien life.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
Actually didn't expect you to watch the video when I suggested it, but I'm glad you did.
That giant void ray at 1:06:30 was from the Real Scale Wings of Liberty mod.
GGG and modders associated to him found a way to 'easily' modify the entire campaigns of SC2 and to implement those changes by using a custom campaign manager where you simply need to press 1 button to apply these changed to your client.
He also runs fundraisers (Keyword: Twitch trolls Grant) to pay modders for creating new content for the SC2 scene. And he sparked his career by doing things that seemed somewhat impossible, like deathless Starcraft and Warcraft. The craziest challenge has to be his Pacifist Wings of Liberty run. The videos are also quite entertaining imo, and even though he ran reforged graphics, he absolutely shares your views on the reforged debacle and tackles it in his deathless run (especially in the undead campaign).
Also, he isn't exactly a noob, he peaked at grandmaster in SC2, so he could at least hold his ground if you two ever were to clash.
WC3 gave birth to the top down survival shooter, which eventually led to red solstice appearing from mods like SWAT, Resident evil, Zombie survival etc.
A shame Troll tribes, farmer vs hunter, vampirism, the thing, parasite etc didn't all get their own games.
The Thing and Parasite absolutely did. Town of Salem, Among Us, Project Winter, etc. The genre is called Social Deduction.
Troll Tribes is kind of the precursor to open world PvP survival games like Rust and Ark when you think about it lol
@@Nuvizzle Yeah, but no standalone games play like Troll Tribes. Rust and Ark are different.
Meanwhile Red Solstice is a direct descendant.
Town of Salem is literally expanded Mafia though@@SaveMeXenu
Top down shooters and survival games existed long before WC3. Heck, the first shooter games were top down or sidescollers.
RTS players also liking FPS games isn't that shocking when you consider they do share that same slow build up to brief frenetic encounters, though the FPS game has that happen relatively quickly while in an RTS it's usually more of a longer build up to it.
It's insane that with this amount of players still active in the game, they let the franchise dwindle.
one mount skin in WoW made more money than all of starcraft 2. if you let greed make your decisions letting starcraft 2 be in maintanance is exactly the right call.
@@Chajos starcraft sold a ton and profits were great on it and having another franchise with millions of users is just another revenue channel. I know they want billions instead of millions, but that just shows how stupid the suits were.
@@markototevthat line of thinking only works if you think it's possible to expand forever.
In reality, the bigger these companies get the more problems they have and as result more failures.
Why put X amount of devs on low income game when you can move them to high income game, produce more content and more profit.
@@Chajos Diablo immortal made a killing, never forget that. Despite it being massively shidded on it doesn't mean those phone-games don't make cash.
@@Nokiya
This isn't how any business works. The goal IS to expand forever, but you don't expand vertically. Look at all of the biggest companies in the world - none of them continue to expand vertically forever, focusing entirely on one product, they branch out and acquire as many different properties and products as they can because appealing to a broad market is drastically more profitable. That's what Riot Games is doing now, making a whole bunch of different types of games (and a very successful show) in the League universe, and it's what Blizzard did in the past to become successful in the first place - WoW is literally a spinoff - but the company has been run by monkeys for a long time so all they can think of these days is cash grabs. Even after the success of their first new IP in decades, they immediately alienated the entire playerbase by making an unending seires of bad decisions and eventually abandoning it to pump out a cash grab sequel.
36:55 AoE 2 has attack move, it was added in HD Edition. But yes, the original didn't have it.
Didn't HD come out after SC2 did?
also I heard that it was somewhat inferior to the og game
@@The-jy3yq Yep, HD came in 2013 and I think attack move was added with one of its DLCs.
Yeah, among the competitive players, HD was considered inferior to the CD version with the latter being played via Voobly
Grant is one of the best things that happen to SC2 community. I play ladder but after while I am bored. However - nightmare mods, Mobius, realscale etc they make me enjoy the game on whole different level.
the crazy people shouting in the town square moved to hots general chat, its so funny
Ahh Grubby see us as sheeps and he see himself as a Lion, nice analogy lol XD
54:45 ha ha, me and my friend came up with the clickbait game title "2v2 naked medic hack" for Brood War. We played exclusively on what we thought was the best map (Sirocco), but because it wasn't Big Game Hunters or Lost Temple, no one joined it. Would you believe that the promise of naked medics drew in more teenagers?
Grubby, you begin making content with mods for wc3 and sc2 and your viewership will grow tenfold. You can use your big community to easily gather enough people to have a blast together on the most popular mods the community has to offer, because you are very easy going and these game are very fun and funny. Hope you try it out as you are already trying new games, but with a bit of familiarity from these RTS you are known for!
One thing I loved about RTS is the story campaign. The character that we have to follow as we command their troops. I've played Battle Realms, following the story of Kenji, played Red Alert, and several notable characters like Tanya, Warcraft 3's Ilidan, etc...
I think having a character whose story we follow is a necessary component so that people would try RTS games.
This is probably the reason why I never enjoy other RTS that much
Even when I go semi-hardcore and play competitively online, the roleplaying and spectacle are really important to keep me motivated to play long-term. The factions and units I play with have to be both competitively effective and also excite my imagination.
'We've got Age of mythology, Age of empires 1, 2, 3, 4, StarCraft 1 and 2, Warcraft 3, and so many other games'
*cries in Warcraft 1 and 2*
Why would he say age of mythology first instead of AoE(2) the best RTS ever. Lumping it in like that was passive aggressive.
@@nutellabrah6718 Bruh
45:20 hearing nuclear launch detected when playing 8 players starcraft ffa was so, so much fun.
For me I feel like Dawn of War 2 and its micro management system is the kind of RTS that has the potential to become popular nowaday. Despite it being an RTS, its multiplayer mode somewhat has a similar feel to MOBA, it has distinguishable position-oriented roles like top,mid&bottom and each roles has its own different responsibility. And compared to other RTS, the number of units or in terms of this game;squads is relatively small so you would be controlling around 3-5 squads of units at once, which isnt too much to handle considering that the micro mechanics in this game arent as complex as MOBA. I also believe that the micro management that is the weapons&gears loadout present in campaign mode is what charming about this game and it gives the similar vibe to loadout system and build itemization in Shootings and MOBA, only if it got imported to multiplayer and its developers give this mode more love.
Also the Last Stand mode was awesome.
Dawn of War 2 was never as succesfull as the first DoW, I dont really get why people highlight it as much. The innovative apparoch to classic RTS' gameplay of the first game held longer than the seconds fast paced tactics gameplay.
I dont think its a good idea to focus on MOBA aspects, those are just a different type of game. Thats just trying to conform to other genres, which probably is part of what killed a big part of the RTS genre. Heck, DoW3s multiplayer probably tried that, and completely failed.
I love DoW 2, but no way. It's extremely clunky, the tug of war gameplay also doesn't suit the core 1v1 pvp experience. I agree that the the future RTS needs heroes with RPG-like mechanics. But that essentially is what Warcraft 3 is, possibly with even more crisp and direct hero control like in Dota 2.
@@termitreter6545 I personally liked the DoW2 campaign.. but the skirmish mode was super arcady and unenjoyable imo.
@@termitreter6545 I know.I never understand why Dawn of war 2 is so popular.Dawn of war 2 is more like a moba game , then DAwn of war 3 which I think is much better rts game
What got me to playing those RTS games were the story/campaign and spectacle. What made me continue playing those games were the gameplay, engine and mods. Even though I long stopped play Starcraft 2 multiplayer, I still play Coop mode and am having a blast with all the campaign mods the game has. Grant's community has made a pretty neat custom campaign manager that lets you install and switch campaign mods with a click of a button.
Grubby brought up a good point I didn't realise - the reason Coop became such a huge success is partly because it builds off the campaign. You are already familiar with the Commanders and the units from what you experienced in the campaign. If Starcraft's story and campaign wasn't as enjoyable, and the game engine and gameplay wasn't as solid, Coop mode may not have turned out as well as it did. So while things like Coop may not necessarily be why people play an RTS, it can definitely help in the longevity of an RTS.
I find that forcing E-sport is difficult, while E-sports can keep the game alive for a very long time. Looking at SC2 and Age 2. Try to force it at the beginning can often kill a game. hero of the storm, To a certain degree overwatch and heartstone.
To me the most memorable classic RTS are not its Multiplayer. Its the campaign, its the "arcade" modes, its the memorable voice acting. Every now and then i would still find myself quoting lines from peon. Hell when i first play Warcraft i was 6 year old in taiwan i didnt even understand English. But i still remember those silly lines.
I guess what I'm saying is. Have better campaign and a robust map editor. The map editor will never happen cuz no one wants to miss out on another dota anymore but please have a good campaign
I'm give one more example, CnC do people really remember Command and Conquer for it's hardcore 1v1? And it's aggressive rock paper scissors design? Or do people remember CnC for the B - movie cutscenes and it's extremely outdated stereotypes humor
@@yamikami13 Definitely remember CnC more for the B movie cutscenes and funny voicelines.
And let's not forget that 1v1 is a very specific part of the multiplayer experience. Age Of Empires II, for example, is way more famous for free-for-alls with diplomacy and Supreme Commander, and now BAR, for their huge team battles.
I'm a little concerned that Stormgate is trying to force E-sports on us before the game is ready to become one. I'm seeing so many clickbait thumbnails about Stormgate tournaments, prize money, strategy guides, and I'm just... not interested yet because I want to begin my experience with the game with the campaign. Once I play through the campaign and learn how the game works myself, then seeing what incredible players can accomplish will be really impressive and interesting, but for now, I just don't have these comparison points so watching it as an esport completely falls flat for me.
I highly doubt I'm alone in that regard. I just don't care about the multiplayer until I get a good feel for the game in singleplayer, so leading off with showmatches before the rest of the game is ready pushes me away from the game more than it makes me excited for it. I'm really hoping this is just a subpar marketing strategy instead of the game trying to remain relevant as an esport from now until everything else is actually ready, because if they're banking on that... it's not going to work.
User generated content was the whole point of GGG's video. In the conclusion he outlines that an RTS that will have a ton of user stuff or mods will become popular. This is why 80% of players in SC2 and other RTS games prefer the campaign or arcade mode or cool mods. When devs give up the notion that they have to make games for the e-sport or competitive scene and focus more on campaigns, coop missions or just make the game moddable, they will start winning back people to the strategy genre.
This is why games like Skyrim, FO and other moddable RPGs became so hugely popular. It is also a smart decision as a dev because you will let the community create content for your game and you dont have to do anything than maintaining the game with updates and some minimalist content here and there. If your game is fun and has good controls and AI, people will make so much fun content, even DLC like mods for your game. However this cannot happen in a corporation controlled gaming industry, because all they care about is money and raising stock value. Only small devs can save the RTS genre...
*Devs have to remember how to bring FUN back into video games*
Blizz devs understood that and put arcade modes in both SC2 and WC3 and that ensured the longevity of their game far beyond a few years.
i think rts is in the same situation as c-rpgs and t-rpgs were a few years ago, so i think we can predict what will happen in the future, we are past the ''kickstart game releases only'' stage and smaller devs are actively making rts's without relying on crowdfunding, we are 1 xcom or 1 baldurs gate 3 away from a rts revival IMHO
Yeah XCOM is probably the best analogy since RTS needs the same treatment. A modernization and streamlining that makes the game more easily controllable and accessible but without feeling dumbed down.
I am fucking 49 years old and still playing WC 3. I also play Panzer, played AoE 3 online a lot, played freaking Dune II back in the time. Total War let me down so bad recently; so I played Dota 2.
We exist :) Old people still play and we have more money than youngsters.
Also… my 7 year old son loves to play Reforged. Hehe. Can’t beat Normal Computer in his dreams but he loves the idea!
RTS and intelligent games have a market. Take heart!
The tryhard-players will always be outnumbered in hilarious fashion by the casuals. Because believe it or not, a lot of people just don't have the time, energy, or will to be a tryhard in something as relatively meaningless as a video game.
it is kind of funny compared to geoguessr. Feels like there are only tryhards playing that :D.
To me its not really about having time or energy... I just don want to to play anything competitively.I want to invest time in a cool RTS story, told through creative campaign map design. Im also fine with messing around with cool mechanics with friends.
What's the worth of a game if you don't try to win?
What's the worth of your win if it wasn't hard?
@@aiugiamos3057 a game can be an experience, or you can learn something from it.
@@aiugiamos3057I play games to unwind and destress, and I find high difficulty only increases my stress levels. Ergo, I play on the lowest difficulty setting possible and seek out games that aren't natively difficult.
Everyone has a different perspective. You'd do well to respect that fact.
1:00:05 I can confirm as someone who used to love just tinkering with Warcraft 3's editor. Starcraft 2's editor was almost completely alien to me, completely killed my urge to make custom maps. Nothing was simple or straightforward or user-friendly; even creating a simple custom unit stretched my abilities to their limit.
Yeah, creating a new Unit was a complete nightmare. I remember that you needed:
- A unit itself, which holds everything together and contains the stats
- An actor for behaviour
- A model
- If wanted to modify the damage it deal you also need to create a weapon
And the list goes on.
While SC2' editor has 100x more flexibility than WC3's editor, it also caused the skill floor to raise by the same amount. In WC3 I can create new unit via CTRL+C, CTRL+V.
I think the reason shooters are higher than moba for current rts players is moba is just "bad" or "casual" strategy. As someone that grew up playing rts and switched to moba for a few years, I hated it. I don't want 4 randoms controlling my side with me in a strategy game.
gotta find nice friends to play with :). It takes a bit of effort, but definitely possible.
The thing is people consider pubg, apex, overwarch as shooters which they are not. Tarkov and Counter-Strike more like that, maybe someone plays CoD or Battlefield multiplayer, but that's a relatively small audience. And I personally haven't seen decent single player shooter since 2014 Wolfenstein (not a fan of the new DOOM, but I can take it ok, still not that many games).
Very interesting perspective. I guess the reason why rts sandboxes have been so fun to play in in the past is because the units are so responsive in those games. The more control you have over unit interactions the more specific you can be in your creative UGC
Counterpoint: due to turn rates and worse overall netcode/older game engine WC3 controls much less smoothly than SC2 and the less creative you can be in UGC, but WC3 UGC innovated entire new genres while SC2's biggest custom maps have almost all just been rehashes of WC3 maps.
WarCraft 3 Campaign to this day has been my most cherished RTS experience, and I would be delighted to receive another experience like it. All the whimsical fun secrets and being able to build up my heroes and fallow their stories.👌
It was great. Man I miss the War3 Trigger editor too.
As a wanna be game designer, this would be my dream project to work on 🤣
I dare not even attempt to make an RTS on my own though, because I know just how much work needs to go into it to make it both feel great to play and be fleshed out.
Huge undertaking, so mad respect for projects like Stormgate.
As to the difficultly keeping people out, I played the Starcraft demo levels because my friends did because they liked WC2 and we would cheat-code through the campaign there just to watch the cutscenes and story. When SC2 was announced I was thrilled to know what would become of the world, despite how little of the story I actually knew as a kid.
The setting had a mood and the story kept me around.
The problem with every new RTS that comes out is that they focus way too hard on a trying to be an esport gutting the experience in some vague, vain attempt at hyper balance for koreans to 1v1 20 games a day to climb a ladder.
WC3 has so many units, heroes, and other things that just aren't balanced for 1v1, but WC3 also has 2v2 and 4v4, and 4v4 is timeless fun. However every unit in WC3 is simply fun to use, balance is about keeping things dynamic and not allowing for oppressive strategies (Ironically something Broodwar and SC2 fails at despite everyone trying to copy those)
The bigger thing though is you need a campaign, and that campaign has to be fun, engaging, and more a sandbox to try things than a hardcore simulation of multiplayer, but also still primarily being based on the multiplayer unit base. For example Warcraft 3 teaches the players how to play Warcraft 3 in general, giving you new units to play with every mission and letting you play around, with only a handful of 'hard' missions that require you to do specific things, such as beating a a timer, or holding out.
Contrast this to Starcraft 2 where more than half of the units you get in the campaign just do not show up in multiplayer.
Also catering to korean ladder grinders has its own issues, when every game is just 3 minute rushes at low ladder and you need to get to higher tiers of the ladder before you can start having real games (And even in the pro scene 'a real game of starcraft 2' being a common phrase referencing to the fact that most games end in early game cheese). Warcraft 3 had its own rushes for sure, but those were noobish and a medium level player can easily hold against a tower rush because it was simply a slower paced experience with higher unit quality and anti-snowball mechanics like exp.
Your game should be fun for 1v1 multiplayer of course, but it should also be fun for 4v4, campaign, custom games, ect, and thats what modern RTS developers keep forgetting, im sure a ton of people remember being sweaty on C&C Red alert 3, but I assure you more people remember playing the hilarious campaign with the absolute treasure that was Tim Curry.
The problem as I see it as a long time RTS enjoyer and also a moba enjoyer, is that Winning a close match in a online RTS match gives you a pretty insane high, but the high you get from winning a good moba match is very comparable only slightly less exciting but the work it takes to play a rts online in a competetive environment is very high while a moba requires less direct manual work for nearly the same high. Mobas are still one of the hardest genres to play and get good at but RTS is like moba but you have to play 3 heroes at once and also hit 100 hotkeys a minute.
Shout out to Grubby's Dad for buying his Cool Son the Game
1:20 rts was amazing when you didnt have internet and your friend came over with his stationary computer.
Yeah, we did that after shool))) bringing your own net cable, ah nostalgic) then the LAN era started and it was beautiful, no need to freakin 24/7 internet connection to play diablo 2 single or with friends=)
@@Stforv ah yeah that as well :). Some computer games as post school activity was nice, and also nice to not go home during rush hour :).
You guys didn't have Lan cafes?
@@DNYLNY not in the late 90's. That would also cost money, while the computer you had at home (and basically literally every family had) was free to use :).
Grubby, i can highly suggest you his channel too. its one of the most unique and fun sc2 content creators in ways.
he is mostly doing challenge runs of campaigns and stuff like: memorizing and literally trying to play through a campaign blindfolded and stuff like that, its kind of crazy with how cheesy and unconventional ways he comes up with to make something work in a way that wasnt intended like that
Put games in cereal boxes. Worked on me as a kid lmao
Dawn of War 1 - Unification Mod has 2 millions downloads now and today it's 1000+ downloads. The game is basically ''dead'' because it was no longer supported by devs and has big competitive scene but it was kept alive by modders.
Age of Empire I and II campaigns were glorious. I don't remember anything about III and didn't play IV, but the campaigns are what made me come back to these games over the years time and time again.
About stormgate, they are actually planning to have heros involved in their 3v3 mode, whereas 1v1 won't have heros. I'm not sure about 2v2 and 4v4 but 1v1 and 3v3 are going to be their main focus points when it comes to balance and esports.
They also said they are going to provide map editor
I think part of WoW's massive success even though its not an RTS it was derived from an RTS. This gave the world so much more depth even on day 1 of the launch of WoW. I think LoL and Riot's League MMO will do exactly the same, with the standing lore and it will lead into that wow factor in their MMO where you can visit all of these locations/characters from the MOBA and experience it first hand.
How an RTS can pull this off, may be yet to be seen, it's gotta really drag us in with immersion and be enticing to play, learn, discover and share.
And also original WoW looked and felt like it was a great mod/map made in wc3 editor.. And now it's like "ok, another random loot item with a +100 strength, whatever.."
Incredible how the best RTS games got forgotten in the past. Great vid Grubby.
you want to categorize rts games?
classic RTS - C&C, warcraft 2, KKnD, Dune, Act of War, Age of Empires
small scale RTS - iron harvest, Company of Heroes, Dawn of War
high execution RTS - Starcraft 2, Warcraft 3
large scale RTS - Total Annihilation, Supreme Commander, Planetary Annihilation, Ashes of the Singularity, Sanctuary
I do believe that older Moba players are starting to move back to RTS. I have been a GM-Challenger level league player for 5-7 years and I want to move back to RTS. The problem I find is actually the lack of competitive tutorials or 1v1 guides inside the game itself and also the big difference between campaign units and multiplayer units. I am talking here about SC2. I love the game, the engine and the movement feels really smooth, but having no idea what is required to get into multiplayer without watching youtube tutorials hurts the immersion and it feels like the level to entry is really high which I think is more of an illusion than a fact. If you actually play the multiplayer, a lot of people are really struggling as well . The things that MOBA do different for sure is that multiplayer starts from the beginning and that creates a sense of community really fast. RTS has the problem of being 1v1 focused, which is great for competitive but it really hurts people that want to play against other players but dont want such a steep learning curve. A functioning 2v2 or 3v3 mode would really help this for returning moba players I believe.
In Circle Empires, which is a casual RTS made by a very small team, the first part had only single player, the average player age was defenitely below 20 and the sequel which added multiplayer primarily and a lot of single player content ended up having 50% of people playing at least some multiplayer.
When they announced Reforged I thought they will add Coop Missions. Would have worked perfectly for WC3 with the Hero System. This could have been a Gold Mine for Blizz. But they fudged it up so much... amazing. I assume Blizz acutally hates money.
I dislike the argument that matches at low level are like two toddlers fighting with poolnoodels. Because for the players, it still feels very stressful and intense. So yes, when starting RTS are probably the most overwhelming and difficult games.
34:50 sorry Grubby, but that's bullshit. Every game should be held to a most basic standard of functionality. Don't insult casuals with thinking they will be fine with something, that is barely "good enough". If an RTS isn't responsive, the units move is clunky, the AI is bad, and mechanics are unintuitive (like with the cover system example), then why play it?
I REALLY don't know what it's like to be that casual! So I don't know if they care! Do you self-identify as casual?
@@GrubbyTalks That depends. I cut my teeth on custom games in Warcraft 3 from around 2006 to 2018. Hero Line Wars, Battleships, Battletanks, Eras Zombie Invasion, Europa Universalis, Evolution Tag, Angel Arena, Civilization Wars and many others. I was quite good in some of them, and I definitely spent a lot of time playing them, but I very rarely played normal games, like 1v1 or 4v4. Would that make me casual, or hardcore? But even casual players can feel, when something is not working, when units have delays, when pathing is wrong, when AI breaks. You don't have to be Maru to intuitively know, when a game is just not right. All these custom games could work because Warcraft 3 felt good to play, crisp, responsive and clean. Everything on top it was built on already existing systems.
So yes, if you can consider me a casual (I definitely am now, seeing how I haven't touched Warcraft 3 or any other RTS for a few years now), we did care. That's why even custom games and custom campaigns weren't one and done, they had versions with tweaks, rebalances and bug fixes. If players didn't care, they wouldn't give feedback to authors.
On the point of having a good/powerful editor, in the case of another game which is not RTS.
Hytale. It was announced in 2018 and still hasn't released and the main reason people are still waiting patiently for it, or are hyped about it at all, is the editors they are promising. They are promising to release tools that will allow you to make pretty much anything you can imagine. Even freer than WC3 World Editor because it will also come with it's own model editor built in. To top it off, its a sandbox game made by the studio responsible for one of Minecraft's most popular servers, Hypixel. Basically, its Minecraft without JavaScript's inherit stupidity as a language and without the baggage of having to learn it in order to mod the game. The editor isn't just an addon either, it's their main selling point for the game.
So, not only will a good editor extend the games lifespan by decades, it will make people _wait to even play the game,_ for at least 6 years, and counting. As far as I know, it's not wven slated for release this year.
To be completely honest, I don't even care if the game is actually good, just as long as the editor is as powerful and easy to use as they promise. Judging by the external play testing they did a little while back, it _will_ be a good game, so I'm just making a point, not saying I think the game's gonna be bad (the devs are responsible for Hypixel after all, they know how to entertain).
I love warcraft 3 arcade/custom maps especially when garena was a thing I spent hours playing custom campaign, anime parody maps lke anime arena and bleach vs one piece so I definitrely agree to grant that the editor is very important the amount of custom campaign maps I have in my WC3 folder is insane I even tried to create my own maps and it was fun learning the editor and WC3 editor is very good at its time
As one of the older nerds who grew up gaming in the 90's, I love your insight Grubby, You give great, thoughtful analysis!
I'm not so sure about the MOBA argument. I played dota / dota 2 forever, and played semi competitive wc3 in the early 2000's. I constantly asked people about wc3 ladder and basically NONE of them were former ladder players. I think the the custom map players were basically a completely unique set. Even meeting other gamers in the wild. If they mentioned wc3 at some point it's more likely to be for mods (not just dota. Tower defense was huge as well)
I still remember the default Azure Tower Defense and it was magnificent)
@@Stforv Oh man, I loved me some Cube Defence if you remember that one. Those matches got so intense late game, good memories.
Campaign is most essential for RTS because it provides the player base a sentiment of being part of the story like Warhammer, Warcraft, and Starcraft.
Yes and no. 4x strategies like civ or paradox games are enough as it is without any story, the gameplay and replayability is enough to keep people in.
Another semi-big game genre was first "person RTS". Like Natural Selection 2. Where you could have one RTS player and the rest play the units in a 1st person style, shooter. Its was quite fun.
Can't recommend the real scale mods for the starcraft 2 campaigns enough. They are tremendous.
23:00 interesting how your advice is just, create a game that is like my favorite game of all time :p
talking about iconic rts games. total annihilation, supreme commander (very passionate and active community to this day), homeworld. heck, what about sacrifice? a super unique take on the genre played in third person.
30:05 The issue is also if there are no educational resources, just laddering will make you learn wrong because you don't know by what metric you are winning so you create gimmicky strats without educational resources.
4:51 is important.
Everyone I know got into Warcraft and StarCraft first, then tried ladder. Then settled on custom games.
It wasn’t fun.
Winning is fun, no matter what the mechanics are.
People will relentlessly defend any mechanic that they have a competitive advantage in.
So I do not think competitive multiplayer was the primary draw at the time.
Even today, games like HoI4 are largely single player experiences.
The genre doesn’t have to be beholden to a specific set of mechanics in my opinion.
Grubby I would like to tell you an old secret that I have kept to myself for over 20 years that almost nobody knows... You learn this trick in the first level of the undead campaign, because I was curious I found out how to get to these places. The trick is that you can attack TREES with the workers, peons and ghouls, so that this trick doesn't blow up I did a normal hit so that the model has wood on his shoulder but the rest of the hits were not mining but attacking. So you can strategically reach a creep with a gold mine faster or kill special red creeps with a tower you once showed it with the peon at the golem with my version it would go faster. You can also work your way into the forest behind the enemy lines to surprise them with towers or something else.
Greetings from an old gamer from the old days
A.K.D
Too bad I thought he hadnt used it yet. But I think its interesting information for the rest of you who didn't know it yet.
25:35
Zerg has to use more inferior units for the first half of the game, until ravagers came out anyway. And queen production emulates the other race production style. So Zerg practices the skills of all races. You can use nydus worm like a force field. You can hatchery>pool block people. Your workers die whenever you make a structure.
For casual entertainment, there is not much I like more than listening to two smart people talk about something. This fit the bill. Thank you. (I had already listened to the commented on video before I watched this one.)
That's why I count the history of gaming by the incursion of a new game mode. We get a new game mode, it gets popular, we get tired, the game mode goes back to being niche then a new game mode emerges.
So it's true that we are in the age of battle royale, roguelites, hero shooters and dark souls like, but it doesn't mean all RTSs are going to fail and nobody plays them anymore.
I really agree with that last sentiment, sandbox is so crucial for a rts to be fun. I've played countless if hours of wc3, but I can't remember a single time I've played the game outside of the custom maps
around 20:00 this was a huge issue (probably still is) in MMOs. I am not thru the video yet, but I hope he recognizes that a game DOES need to cater to both audiences. The hardcore players are who bring casual players back in over time so the game actually sustains after launch. If you have 10 games you own and want to play one, you're more likely to hop into the one you have a friend in because he's on every day
Late to the party, thank you for the video. I am a solo player who loves 'Skirmish' modes! I have not played RTS multiplay in over 2 decades and I rarely touch campaigns. But I intend to play Tempest Rising's campaign
With regards to demographics, I wonder how many people would stick around longer for Starcraft 2 if the developers started using the map editor to push down stream some custom challenges once a month.
If that works (I have a feeling it would), it would be a no brainer, the editor is for fans, but it doesn't mean they can't integrate it themselves in their workflow.
Same thing for Warcraft 3.
They wanted to use it to sell user made mods as a 0 effort rentseeking revenue stream for themselves. When that didn't work out they practically abandoned the arcade and overall support for the editor. Blizzard just isn't the kind of company to give their players anything for free anymore.
I remember my entry into the world in rts: it was Empire Earth . Not WC3 Not AoE. Why? Because of the Fantasy of building huge armies and rising through the ages. I had 0 intrest in tactics and getting better at the game. That all came way later. So my guess is: There is no entry point for new players that have never played an RTS. All the existing "successfull" RTS have one thing in common: They got an interesting twist besides being an RTS game. WC3 and Spellforce have one of the most interesting fantasy worlds. SC2 has the best feel and scify world and in AoE you rise through the ages, can build massive armies and build walls. So as somebody that has nothing to do with RTS games you get an entry point. BUT! WC3 e. g. is too unforgiving for new players. You cannot learn the game without studying some guides. Plus you can't fullfill the fantasy of a huge fantasy army (thats why total war warhammer got so pupular).
I really don't like to say it but Stormgate will not get any kind of big success. Even if the campaign is extremely good, it has no unique selling point to offer. Playing the game feels more clunky than SC2 and there is no real RTS-fantasy that you can satisfy with that game.
What to do: flatten the learning curve. Not by making games more simple but by fusing fun game concepts with competative play in a way that a new RTS-player gets from using cheats to create a crazy army to choosing the right build order to counter his opponent.
Warcraft Reforege footage come from his Speedrun/0death runs.
He wanted to make fun that REFORGE is MORE broken than OG.
Finally, Giant Plant Gaming!
Totally agree! All I did as a kid was play wc3 custom maps; rpg, survival, tower defense all except dota lol
Though what got me hooked with the game is art direction and campaign. So I think those 2 are also important.
RTS's, especially competitive 1v1 is hard to monetize because readability is everything so having skins for units or buildings would feel bad.
But I feel like if there was an rts with good custom map maker and monetization like dota 2 with hero items so you can show them in custom maps it would be both profitable and fun to play.
44:37 one of the things that makes it fun to watch dota2. So many broken yet balanced things.
Age of Empires 4 hover at around 14K concurrent, meanwhile Age 2 hovers at around 24K. I don't get it why Grubby focus more on Age 4 than 2.
he hates aoe2
Because he likes it more? Why is that hard to get
After playing both game, I’d say aoe4 is better. The issue here is the core aoe player base have played the same game for 20 years and already pass the difficult learning curve of aoe2. Now they try the newer game and don’t enjoy it because it’s out of their comfort zone
Thanks for the reaction and thoughts, Grubby!
Spellforce 3 + its expansions did okay, and were completely focussed on single player. That's also an RTS-RPG.
That game at least did much better than gray goo and ashes of the singularity. Not nearly as well as AoE IV though.
Why people don't play multiplayer in RTS. The problems are Smurfs - Sweating - Game design is = You built this building so I will build this building that counters you. - Multiplayer consists of using game mechanics and cheese to beat other pleyer = encircle, tower rush, etc.
When i boot up an RTS game i like to build mixed armies and watch them clash in an epic battle not to do 150 apm to beat someone because my unit was made to counter their unit.
that's part of strategy aspect of these games. adapt to one's strategy and counter. if you expect one type of game everytime then you arent built for that genre
@@Eri4Jp That's why we have 20%/80% split
@@micasa8421 the 80% aka people who play campaign for few hours and jump to other game because they never were into it, while people who actually enjoy "starcraftlike" RTS play multiplayer. If you want to play slow paced clunky strategy game with braindead AI just play something else there are plenty of titles which cater to that audience.
The success of co-op commanders in SC2 is because the mode is best combination of all of the most loves things in the RTS world: starcraft engine and gameplay, command and conquer generals gameplay, co-op, non-competitive but fun challenge and the un-shameful arsenal of mass destruction weapons.
Hey Grubby, Hope you're doing well!
with very succinct and interesting commentary throughout, this was a very informative and educational watch!
1:00:36 No. It's quite easy, you don't have to know any language and as long as you can use logic, you can program in both WC3 and SC2 with simple UI (which is downside for someone with experience, tbh).
I missed Command and conquer general
12:50 'How do we help these people stick around'
The answer, was monthly missions. That would be content. People love singleplayer, give them more singleplayer, obviously. Now, co-op was their answer to this, trying to bait people into friending randoms to play or getting their friends to play. Which worked til new content dried up. That was too high budget, the flashiness and excitement of new heroes was good. Replayability was good. But it had no single-player option. The scale was larger than it needed to be I mean. Granted they tried this with Nova Covert ops. But I think the missions in that could have been released longer over time for example, and more gradually with more quality of interactions and less quantity of unit interactions, right. That was a good idea. But, she was, like Hillary Clinton, who wants to play Hillary Clinton as a Sniper lmao. Also, it could've been shifted to a monthly thing, $5 a month, or $30 upfront. Then, you still owe a final mission for the character when it drops off, then announce a new character right after, so people go from 'should I cancel?' to 'oh shit I'm hyped again'.
4:30 look no further than Assassins Creed where around 90% of the games start by the MC having someone close to him die, so MC tries to find the culprit behind some secret organisation and needs to join the assassins to finally get that kill done. xd
I've checked some games of 9-bit Army, it looks cool too.
Even if they don't make it to that competitive scene I'm pretty happy with all the RTS coming out or announced in the oven recently ~
The next major RTS will fail UNLESS Grubby reacts. The time is now!
sc2 being released over 10 + years ago, still amazes me with the graphic it has and the gameplay of each campaign, they are all different and have different mechanics. In wings of liberty, you had the units for free and just payed for the upgrades for them, on heart of the swarm, you had the choice to either go for one type of unit evolution or the other and you would try those evolutions so you could decide which one suited your gameplay and for legacy of the void every unit wasn´t fully "operational" until you reached certain points in the story, each of them had different mechanics and abilities, etc. the numbers it has and the development behind till this day, for me is still amazing.
fuck balance, fuck listening to rts pros, just make a fun game with a great campaign.
Esports is cancer.
@@Barbarossa97amen
I disagree that there are no future young RTS players. My kid is in 3rd grade and he loves microing units and trying to be as fast as he can. He is trying to compete with a bunch of 20 year olds, and while he gets very frustrated when he is out-microed, he is sufficiently motivated to practice specific micro sequences. It's crazy. Future RTS gamer.
one thing I dislike with rts is the whole "build more workers to get more recurses". I'd rater see that you start with a fixed amount of workers (that has a respawn timer if ded). That way you can still go after them, but you get to choose how to allocate them, but games dont get drawn out because of both sides being too large machines. Also, you get to stay playing the game right away, instead of the whole build up economy zzz phase.
CnC3 Kane's Wrath is the best RTS when it comes to actual gameplay (Even though I am not a fan of how buildings are built) and I don't think anything can beat it.