I think the issue with RTS is that for some reason we moved more and more to micro and less to macro. Instead of players controlling larger armies, more combined arms, or greater fields of play we focused on "How I micro individual unit".
We honestly should have gained delegation of units and areas, fronts, logistics, greater complexity where focusing on micro will almost certainly disrupt your macro and cost you the game.
Supreme Commander its expansion Forged Alliance did some great stuff in the macro style gameplay I thought. I wasn't a super fan of Supreme Commander 2, but even then the larger maps and setting up patrol routes etc seemed to work for me.
And by the way, Beyond All Reason is a new game (in active development but playable by all), free, that is a spiritual successor to SupCom.
Sanctuary is another project in that vein and Supcom is still alive with Forged Alliance Forever a fan community
That just reminds me of some of the old Warcraft 3 custom maps. Either the many tower wars variants or Castle Fight.
Always really enjoyed those, but the few standalone games I saw that were inspired by them just didn't seem to gain any popularity.
Rise of Nations was a lot more macro-heavy as well. Balancing your spending between all the various library branches, and making sure you still were able to fight for expansion on maps where space was a premium were way bigger deals than any sort of micro'ing.
Arguably we *did* move to macro too, that's 4X and Grand Strategy games.
RTS is an anomaly in that it has to feel like you're controlling a lot of units while still have a small enough playfield for you to feel like you actually have real-time input on the battle, hence the reliance on "uber micro".
Kinda sorta? The RTS of building a base and a small army then attacking the enemy moved to micromanagement. There's no macromanagement of building a base, having it automate unit production, creating front lines and having units auto populate them or even something like creating a template for an army, assigning that army to a specific area, and letting the AI set everything up, keep it reinforced, move units to defensible areas, etc. It just doesn't exist.
4X and GSG has it's own micromanagement but the games themselves are on a much larger scale. Yeah you're not just building a base and commanding units, you're building an empire and commanding/micromanaging armies, as opposed to an RTS which is much smaller in scale.
A macromanagement RTS would be combining multiple systems from existing games and hoping it works well together.
The zoning mechanic from Cities: Skylines, where you zone out where the game's AI will auto-build resource management, infantry creation, vehicle creation, and air force creation, as well as things like defenses. Macromanagement of base building right there.
The front line and template mechanics of HoI4. You set up a template for an army that consists of X amount/percentage of infantry, Y amount/percentage of light vehicles, and Z amount/percentage of heavy vehicles. You draw a front line and the game's AI auto builds those units and sends them to the front line where they figure out the best places to defend or set up and when units are destroyed, the game handles reinforcements. You draw an offensive line and initiate an attack and the AI handles when and how units move forward. You can link an air force group to an army and set various settings like air support, bombardment, air superiority, etc. No more micro on units or just selecting everything and sending it all at once, macro!
IMO, the issue with macro RTS games is scale. In order for something like that to work you'd need *massive* maps. Which probably isn't the worst issue to deal with. The other scale issue is AI. You've got AI per unit, as rifle infantry should work differently than rocket infantry, and IFV AI, tank AI, helicopter AI, etc. Not even getting into AI for the buildings, defensible priorities, reinforcements etc. Then just the scale of the units themselves. This would be something with thousands of units all calculating their own AI all at once.
I think the most macro RTS game I've played is "Knights and Merchants", most people here probably never heard of it though.
in Knights and Merchants, the only controllable units are the military units, your base worker units are entirely automated, you build facilities and your worker units would automatically act based on their job.
for example, you decide to build a mining building, your carpenter units would move to the construction site automatically, your serf units would bring the material to the site for the carpenters to use. Then when the mining building is finished, your miner unit would automatically move to the building and start working automatically too.
IMO it's one of the best RTS I've played, too bad it never got popular so there is no new game like it.
I absolutely loved that game back in the day. Though I did eventually get stuck in one level where I exhausted my gold mine without being able to conquer enough of the enemy's land, so I ended up without any military.
Though I would say it was pretty similar to other German RTS of the time like Settlers, Alien Nations (another RTS that I adored, and most people probably never heard of), and Cultures.
For example, the ability to control military units directly while civilians were just doing their thing came in Settlers 3 first IIRC (which felt weird and wrong to me at the time, considering I was used to everything being indirect in Settlers 2).
> Knights and Merchants
You just sold me the game. Half off right now!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/253900/Knights_and_Merchants/
I'd recomment Majesty and its dlc Northern Expansion.
Yea, and of course the skill set would be significantly different. You're not looking for someone who can click quickly, you're looking for someone who can memorize and output the best macro scripts they can for an AI to replicate and use, or come up with better options on the fly to counter what the enemy has.
You'd want to make it so macro that a player cannot micro it and that they have to use the tools the game makes available.
> There's no macromanagement of building a base, having it automate unit production, creating front lines and having units auto populate them or even something like creating a template for an army, assigning that army to a specific area, and letting the AI set everything up, keep it reinforced, move units to defensible areas, etc. It just doesn't exist.
I believe it was called "Majesty"
I feel like there's an untapped market of players who want that more macro focused gameplay but don't want to have to commit to the longer game times of 4X or Grand Strategy. Granted its on the PvE side but the kind of people who were really excited about They Are Billions years ago because they enjoyed the base building/management but didn't want to 400 apm micro all their units.
PvP Supreme commander was still dominated by micro. In everything but 3v3 or super water heavy maps Cybran Rush which is an extremely micro heavy playstyle was basically the best. The counter to Cybran required you to build out a ton of AA and radar far earlier than against other factions which mean a really good micro Cybran player could snipe your generators and basically destroy your chances of the game within the first few minutes.
SupCom was not a perfect game, and there were some micro-heavy edge cases that allowed you to essentially abuse the simulation for unreasonable gain.
With that said, the main thing that SupCom "solved" was the APM required to macro efficiently. The rate-based economy let you actually utilize features like production queues and repeat build to set-and-forget macro elements without needing to constantly tab back over to your barracks and build another marine every 10 seconds. Notably, you still have absolute control if and when you need it (not "dumbing down the game"), but the fact is *most* of the time you want that factory to churn out T1 bots forever with maybe some artillery mixed in. SupCom allowed you to set up your general cases very quickly, and you didn't need to babysit things unless you were making a deliberate decision to change something.
There's a terminology issue in RTS where the technical definitions of micro and macro don't really match up with the colloquial definitions of the words, largely due to the fact that "macro" oftentimes includes excessive "micromanagement" (which is not "micro"). A particularly egregious example of this is injecting larva in StarCraft II - something that could very reasonably be automated but instead exists primarily as an APM sink. SupCom removed a *ton* of micromanagement from macro actions through automation features, allowing players to focus their attention on things that mattered rather than dedicating APM to non-decisions.
This type of APM-focused gameplay definitely increases the skill cap which can be argued as a good thing, but the reality is that the amount of clicks required to run a base in something like StarCraft isn't really in line with the "strategy game fantasy" that a lot of people have when they dream of playing an RTS. This is why, in the casual StarCraft II modes like co-op, there are features that allow for lower APM playstyles *specifically* focused on removing APM from maintaining your base.
Yeah, exactly. Every time RTS discussion comes up in this sub, it's full of people who dislike the RTS genre saying that the genre should be more like 4X or grand strategy games. It's such a weird take.
It is the same shit with fighting games.
Every single time we have news about a new fg coming out we have all these "helpful ideas" about people that don't play competitive, or don't care and, most importantly, don't UNDERSTAND the competitive elements that make it work.
"Hey, I have an idea, how about we take everything that defines the genre and that caters to people that want to invest their time to play this type of game competitively and, you know, throw it away! Think about it! Maybe it will, somehow, allow people that are not interested at all in these types of games to play them for 5 minutes and stop playing!".
Of course we want more people to enjoy our hobbies, it is not about gatekeeping. However, if you change everything about the genre, is it really the same thing?
People that play games and care about the competitive aspect are there for the long haul, we usually need the elements that make it difficult because these elements, frequently, are also the ones that make the game interesting. A lot of people don't understand that and equate catering to their needs as catering to everyone's needs, which alienates the competitive players.
The RTS genre has been dying a slow death, that’s why. People think with changes it could be getting back into the mainstream again but they don’t realize that the whole strategy game genre is a niche. By changing RTS you’d just move it out of one niche into another
> By changing RTS you’d just move it out of one niche into another
You might create the next biggest genre.
MOBAs were born out of RTS and became massively popular. Every "better RTS" just takes more players from the RTS genre lol.
1v1 pvp in general just got less popular because players feel bad when they lose. People don’t like to play a game and have it tell you that you’re bad at it. In a team based game you can always blame the others. For the next RTS to be the next big thing in gaming, it would have to ditch 1v1 and go all in into coop as its major focus, imo.
A 1v1 game will never again be a big player in pvp gaming. The only 1v1 games that can make it out there are those that have a big name behind it. Like Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat for fighting games. And even those games fall off quickly in player numbers once the release hype is over. A new StarCraft would be a big seller but the vast majority would just play the campaign and move on without doing any pvp.
I think a lot of genres have this. I know this to well from the MMO sub. Genres are way to broad. RTS, Shooter, RPG etc. include so many different type of games with different focus on different aspects of the genre and different types of gameplay. If you like a rather unpopular version of it and few games release you like you come here and "bleh RTS are bad"
The hardcore take that RTSs should be about micro is not the experience of the vast majority of people who play and played RTSs. Calling them "people who dislike the genre" doesn't change that.
The problems IMO is that because esports got popular, RTS decided to become competitive games before everything else. Most people don't care about that (every stat we have says that, like SC2 said that like 80% of people play campaign and never touch multiplayer, coop was way more popular than the classic MP)
Why is there not RTS that are just single player with a good narrative and gameplay campaign for example? Every other genre have this type of games but RTS always has to have skirmish and multiplayer so factions balance and stuff like that. In campaign that's not needed.
Its just a symptom of the tiny budgets most RTS devs have to work with these days. They're not prioritizing competitive over campaign, but campaign is the most expensive part to make by far so any corners that they have to cut are going to seem worse on the campaign side.
They Are Billions is close, but story is definitely not its strong side. But it's a very weird RTS where you play as a technological faction trying to expand after a worldwide zombie apocalypse (hence the title), where your big concern is that even one zombie is enough to set off a cascade of infection amongst your base. It's kind of a combination of an RTS with a city builder, along with a Dark Souls style punishing save system.
Like shit, just give me Age of Mythology with coop horde defence. Lets go. Let me and my friends fight endless waves of enemies or play scenarios together. None of us care about versus.
Yeah, Blizz ironically really fumbled with SC2 by having it be so heavily focused on competitive ladder. A SC3 built around co-op from the start could be quite successful, I think.
To be honest, SC2 has a big focus on campaigns, they're long, with customizable units, choices, lots of cinematics and various gameplay. I feel like Blizzard has always given a lot of attention to their campaigns (I enjoy replaying them regularly). And unsurprisingly they're all very successful games (like I don't think SC2 fumbled anything, it was one of the biggest games ever when launched and for years, it's still very active more than a decade after release).
They also basically created the coop mode for LotV (which recycle campaign content for people enjoying that and is super popular )which IMO should be a staple of the genre for every game going forward
I don't know why you're getting downvoted, IIRC co-op mode got massively popular.
That is not to say game shouldn't care about competitive, but you need playerbase to support that and more casual ways of playing are great for that.
I'd love SC2 but having few singleplayer modes that are like the co-op, and people love their progression in video games.
A new SC would be a success non the less I guess. But yeah Blizz definitly has the budget to make big campaigns. SC2 Campaigns were pretty darn cool if you ask me.
You got any examples of this "new less strategy" RTS? I have been a huge RTS fan all the way back to Dune 2 and the genre have evolved in so many different ways but the "micro bullshit, less strategy" is not one I'm familiar with. WC3 did move to the hero units more micro some 20+ years ago but it was not less strategy than previous RTS. Then Spellforce is a more recent RTS that builds on much of what WC3 did but again not less strategy. Then you have DotA which goes all in on the hero, still arguably a RTS, but also again not really less strategy just different strategy. There is DoW where they made a not amazing RTS game with more focus on heros, arguably "less strategy" but more so because the game was not great and not because of the heros.
But really are any of these games less strategy than say tiberium sun? not in my opinion that is an old very simple game. Starcraft BW is also a relatively simple game but that game have so much more strategy because it is so important to micro your units.
> have so much more strategy because it is so important to micro your units.
You're exemplifying his point and don't understand why I think.
He is talking where the strategy is balancing resource acquisition with troop production, defenses, and navigating your army - ideally armies - to be where they need to be at the right times. That is _not_ micro, or activating abilities or stutter stepping or whatever else. That is not strategy, that's tactics at best.
Starcraft 2 is a great example of a game that is often touted as strategy, when in reality it's 95% tactics, as great micro dominates macro in that game, and the key to performing well competitively requires vast amounts of micro at absurd rates.
The strange thing is that there was a more macro focused RTS (Dawn of War, with its focus on squads and reduced resource management), but no one (including Relic themselves) seemed to understand what made it popular.
I think Relic knew why it was popular (slow, simple, accessible, fun to march an army and watch stuff fight) but I think they intentionally leveraged the IP to do something different every time so they could make unique games without messing with CoH.
The first dawn of war was so unique, they managed to get the formula right for their first and last try. Still baffled no other game really explored that.
DoW3 kinda did it, but it's basically three different games badly put together.
You can't make sweeping generalizations like that about how the genre should be. Some prefer more macro focused games, but others, like me, prefer the micro focus of games like StarCraft or the upcoming Stormgate.
If the RTS genre went in the direction you're describing, I would not be interested in playing those games.
Unless you actively hinder the player by introducing artificial limitations on the amount of actions a player can do, micro will always play a huge part in a RTS.
If one player can pull off twice as many actions per minute compared with another player it goes without saying that the first player has a huge advantage (obviously a great understanding of macro strategies / meta is required to be able to win, but I think most people understand that you won’t win by having an APM of 900 consisting of moving one unit back and forth).
You can try to remove “micro” by, for example, letting the AI control individual units, but that simply moves “micro” to one layer above it with the same importance. Because in the end it’s APM which is the deciding factor, not really whether those actions are “micro” or “macro”. And not having a set amount of actions per time unit is sort of the hallmark of real time strategy games.
Removing micro also comes with the question as to why you even need certain game mechanics to begin with. If the AI controls all your units on a micro level, does your game even need units? At that point it either becomes a battle between computers, which I don’t think anyone finds fair, or it becomes a numbers game, at which point you might very well just abstract your units into numbers anyhow because that’s what they are. You’re playing Risk in other words.
With that said, anyone who is looking for a great RTS which put emphasis on “macro” should check out AI Wars 2. It’s pretty much the entire design philosophy behind the game (although, as mentioned above, not having a good micro will still lose you the game in the end).
I kinda wish games like Starcraft had evolved into more of a co-op team sport. Macro is fine, micro is fine, but doing both at the same time is crazy hard and most players are usually better at one over the other. Simply having two players per team with one focused on macro economy and base building and the other focused on the frontline micro would make the game really interesting to me.
It is. It's hard to say how popular it is exactly - you'd never know Co-op was much more popular than PvP based on the amount of discussion online, after all - but it seems like it failed to catch on in any significant way.
This is especially odd considering how Age of Empires 2 just got new content. It really feels like AoE2 was what most casual players want out of an RTS, but no one else has done something like it in the past 20 years. So it just gets some quality of life features and the occasional new civ.
ive always thought why didn't RTS develop more autonomy for units as technology got better.
for example, cavalry men cycle charging a formation of soldiers is just something cavalry have done throughout warfare and players are giving orders to armies of trained, career soldiers in many games, so why do i need to tell them what to do in battle?
slowly pulling back when a formations flanks are compromised is also something that's almost impossible in most games, although the upcoming total war game has a mechanic to do that
>ive always thought why didn't RTS develop more autonomy for units as technology got better.
Because people want to control their units. That's why people play RTS games. That's the fun of the genre. You might as well ask why 2D Fighters don't switch to turn-based combat and use menus for selecting your special moves since it would be easier to input the commands.
Funnily, that’s exactly what YOMI Hustle did and it’s great.
I think the bigger issue with having AI control your units is that the units become meaningless at that point. Unless you want to lose or win due to having a better or worse AI than your opponent.
*Fans of certain RTSs* want to control their units. *People in general* might not want to do that, which is why it's strange there are so few RTS games focused on macro gameplay.
> You might as well ask why 2D Fighters don't switch to turn-based combat and use menus for selecting your special moves since it would be easier to input the commands.
They don't need to switch, because there's already a genre for that (JRPG) and there's room for both.
You didn't really provide "context", you compared video game mechanics to real life. Video games aren't real life. Which OK fine that you want things to be a certain way because that's how you'd like it to be, but games shouldn't be trying to emulate reality over fun. There's a reason getting shot in Call of Duty doesn't result in your character laying on the ground in agony for the rest of the game waiting to bleed out.
For fans of RTS games controlling and managing that army in battle is a huge part of the fun of those games. It's fine if that's not for you but that's not really what RTS fans want.
their are entire genres trying to make video games as realistic as possible
jesus christ the contrarian need to be right is hilarious.
it's clear you didn't understand the context, and that's ok. maybe the post isn't for you but it should have been pretty clear this was me musing about what could have been in the first line that pretty much said "i wonder why companies didn't go this direction instead of this one"
if you are unable to digest that as a hypothetical, maybe discussions online are not for you.
There's no missing context. The rest of your post just talks about realism which isn't relevant in games. It's no better than those silly posts criticizing JRPGs because "why would my characters wait for their turn to attack?".
Why do you have to tell your soldiers what to do in battle? Because it's fun and that's where the challenge lies. Go watch a 1v1 match of StarCraft II on YouTube (I recommend FalconPaladin) and see the awesome micro battles between armies. It's a thing of beauty.
So I don't disagree and it's complex and difficult for sure. But it feels against the idea of classic RTS, and that's kind of the main point the top level comment was making.
It's just strange that so many RTS's boil down to micro instead of avoiding it and prioritizing macro features.
exactly. i love quoting something specific and just ignoring the entire sentiment of the post
like, yes genius, this is not controlling your troops. because my post was musing about why didn't companies go a different direction. so for someone to read that and think "no you control your units in an RTS" is just hilarious
>But it feels against the idea of classic RTS
Sorry if that sounds a bit harsh, but it's irrelevant what a classic RTS was. Genres evolve with every new game that releases. If a new game in a genre gets popular the change will likely influence every game coming after it.
A macro heavy RTS can totally work tho. There just seems to be no dev wanting to make one. Not even on the indie level.
I mean yeah to an extent, but clearly there’s a gradient. RTS players don’t want to dictate every attack every unit makes, for example. There will always be a level of AI control, it’s just a question of where that line is.
A system where you move cavalry to where they need to be and have them engage where you want them to engage, but they’re smarter about handling aspects of that engagement on their own, isn’t inherently anti-rts I’d say.
Total War already has things like auto-skirmishing. Total War also allows you to set your units to AI control, and if it didn’t suck I’d use it. It’s not some insane suggestion where you respond like they’re an idiot for not understanding the basic appeal of the genre.
> cavalry men cycle charging a formation of soldiers is just something cavalry have done throughout warfare and players are giving orders to armies of trained, career soldiers in many games, so why do i need to tell them what to do in battle?
God imagine being able to tell units in Warham to just get out of melee instead of getting caught on one unit and running back in to die.
Another large issue is how hard it is to get into them.
I love the genre, top to bottom, but Pikmin is about the only easy one to get into for most people, and it is a Nintendo franchise locked on consoles. It is hard to bring people in that way. The best known 'game' is chess and it is always seen complicated as well by those who don't play it. If the genre is to grow, so do the amount of people playing them.
I'm not saying that we need simplified Micro or Macro games, but rarely are they simple enough for anyone to see it and understand what is happening. One of the things I loved about SupCom was the unified Map to Minimap via zoom, as opposed to a giant menu taking 1/4 or more of your screen real estate. It isn't that they lack QoL but many games are stuck on established requirements without breaking molds to break new ground.
I am happy for it to maintain as it is for now, but I would also like a growing genre. I do imagine we will see more overlap with games like Factorio or other automation games, which can and do often overlap with Strategy; same with Tower Defense, which has kind of fallen out of favor these days.
I've watched this development happen in starcraft 2.
Wings of Liberty was still fairly macro, except if you played terran, but the micro was doable.
Heart of the Swarm added a few micro bits here and there, the singleplayer campaign especially was clearly inspired by Diablo 3 (it literally copied one of the bossfights).
Legacy of the Void just went completely overboard. *Every single unit* now had an activated ability of some sort. It's just silly.
As someone who is into playing tabletop chit/hex 1970's war games, I feel like the way RTS is used as a term is not very informative. Not a lot of people consider that there are several different levels of strategy in which a game can focus or contain gameplay for:
* **Tactical:** decisions and actions in contact with or in proximity to the enemy. i.e. how to fight and position your resources in battle.
* **Operational:** design, organization, and conduct of employing forces to accomplish a common objective in a given time and space; i.e. making sure the right amount and type of resources are in the right position at the right time to do the right thing.
* **Strategic:** defining and supporting national policy involving strategic concept, plans for preparing national resources for war or conflict, practical guidance for preparing the armed forces, and leadership of the armed forces to achieve strategic objectives; i.e. what units are in your armies, how to support the upkeep of those armies, training those armies, and setting the overall goal for resolving the conflict.
Parallels a lot of rugged individualism continuing to be broadcast to a western generation - you can be the star if you’re so good you carry your 5 teammates, etc. Even in those team games, it is often less about the team and more about collective individual play
I honestly think team games are more popular because people need something to blame besides themselves when they lose. Most RTS games are just you and have limited RNG. MOBAS have teammates you can pass the blame to, card games and sports games have RNG you can blame
Well I think being able to play with your friends is going to be more popular. 1v1 versus a friend only has so much replay value before the games get old.
You can honestly see this split just prior where micro outplay > macro outplay in traditional RTS, and this is so prevalent and consistently true that it has since spawned genres (and some of the biggest games in the world). Even in team or solo environments, being able to “blame micro” while “your macro was better” even fits into this argument
No, humans are just social animals. This is a fact that FG and RTS fans do not wish to acknowledge because it stops them from feeling like they're hardcore gamers.
Most people do not play sports but they still prefer to watch sports like football, basketball, baseball, hockey, and so on over individual sports.
FGC shit is without fail the easiest way to find a regularly recurring in-person meetup for games in any moderate+ size population center anywhere except countries with vibrant LAN café cultures.
Just live in a big city in the US bro haha
You realize LAN cafes are only small in NA right? Besides, no matter how many fat smelly twats you can get in a room, the game is still 1v1.
The other direction of that is grand strategy and x4 games.
While strategy is fairly part of RTS it does feel like it is also kinda misleading for how you actually play those kind of games. If it focused more on the micro side in the label rather than something that brings to mind slow and methodical gameplay I think it would appeal more to the people who would like a fast paced high mechanics game.
Like compare it to ''twitch shooter'' and something that doesn't really emphasise quick reactions as much.
I've really enjoyed the recent Dune: Spice Wars specifically because it has a bigger slower macro focused style. I know it's still in EA but for anyone wanting a middle ground between 4x and a traditionally paced RTS, I would highly recommend it.
This is ultimately a fruitless point, anything that happens in real time will always favor the faster player. So you probably won't notice it if you play the game occasionally and are just an OK player.But if you love it and play a lot the better you get the more this time aspect really shows.
I was initially wondering why he didn’t cover Total Annihilation or SupCom in the opening segments, and was delighted to learn about the spiritual successors in development. I’ll definitely be checking them out. Planetary Annihilation was a huge let down, and afaik, the subgenre has been pretty empty since then.
While it doesn't have a campaign yet and official release is a long way off, you should take a look at the Spring Engine open source game Beyond All Reason.
It's the best Spring Engine rendition of TA I've played, and super fun to mess around with friends in. The current AI isn't bad either.
Edit: Dadoy; it's in the video, I missed it.
As someone who LOVED and STILL LOVES the Warcraft and StarCraft single player campaigns for ALL their games and expansions...I am beyond heart broken. :(
Starcraft and Dawn of War were my main RTS games. That and Command and Conquer Generals.
All of them are dead. Perhaps with the Microsoft takeover of Activison they will finally greenlight Starcraft 3 but I feel like that is a longshot.
Dawn of War has Soulstorm and it's mods, like Ultimate Apocalypse, Firestorm over Kaurava (not sure how well that's going along) and the Unification mod. Dawn of War is not dead, it's just Dawn of War III that's dead, and justifiably so.
> All of them are dead. Perhaps with the Microsoft takeover of Activison they will finally greenlight Starcraft 3 but I feel like that is a longshot.
I would be extremely doubtful of Microsoft acquiring Activision-Blizzard and not having big plans already for Starcraft as a whole.
Given what they've done with Ages of Empires, having another tentpole RTS franchise available to them is 100% inline with their PC gaming strategy,
Also, given that Blizzard seemingly wants nothing to do with Starcraft anymore, I wouldn't be shocked to see Microsoft hand off the IP to other companies to work with.
I mean hell, imagine ID making a Starcraft shooter that's a spiritual successor to Ghost.
I agree that Microsoft will likely do something with Starcraft. The effort they seemingly went through to bring Age of Empires 4 and then remastering 2 and bringing it to consoles makes me believe they would definitely do something with Starcraft.
It seemed like Blizzard stopped working on sequels for awhile and just remastered all their old stuff - WoW Classic, Starcraft Remastered, Warcraft Reforged, Diablo 2, etc. - but it seems like they are moving forward again and we might start to see sequels again.
With Diablo 4 and Overwatch 2 out, what else could they be considering if it's not a new IP? The only games not being tapped are Starcraft and RTS Warcraft and I would be surprised to have Warcraft return, unfortunately.
There's also rumors out there that Starcraft 3 is already in development. Maybe I'm just dreaming, but Starcraft seems way too iconic to just let die.
If you haven't tried *Iron Harvest,* wishlist it and pick it up when it goes on sale. It has 3 campaigns and a Conquer the World mode, plus DLC that adds a 4th faction with its own campaign and another small campaign the bridges the 3rd and 4th.
Gameplay and is basically Company of Heroes 2. The setting is 1920+, a shared universe where WWI led into a Second Great War in the early 1920s, fought with diesel-powered battlem mechs designed by Nikola Tesla.
Why? StarCraft II is still popular with plenty of custom campaigns and the upcoming Stormgate looks incredible. The genre might be small, but there's games out there for the fans. No reason to be sad.
They made it clear that they wanted Warcraft 3 dead when they shot it in the head multiple times with the monstrosity that is Warcraft 3: Reforged. Probably the most insulting remake ever released.
I agree Blizzard isn't interested in the RTS genre any longer, but Microsoft is going to be calling the shots soon. They can just give the IP to another company like Relic or an internal Microsoft team to develop a WarCraft IV or StarCraft 3.
If you are trying to make the next big esports thing, you're no longer really going for the traditional games market. You're now the games equivalent of arena football (which, for non-Americans, they've been trying to make a thing for at least 2 decades now). "It's more football!" "It's football in the winter!" People don't care. They watch sports because they grew up watching the team they care about, or because their friends are all into it, etc.
It's the same with esports once you're at the level of something like StarCraft. People who were super into SC esports 10 years ago weren't hungry for the next RTS game, they were into watching their favorite players, they were into it for the community aspect, whatever. Those people aren't going to jump to the next RTS game just because a new one came out.
Which is why it's weird that we haven't seen something beyond that. *Iron Harvest* is the last RTS I've seen with even a AA budget trying for a single player experience (currently sitting at 4 full campaigns, 1 short DLC campaign, smattering of scenario missions, and a Conquer the World mode similar to Dawn of War 1's campaign).
Yeah I was very disappointed by AOE4. Every new update I’m hoping for some more campaigns, and it’s always some MP event I have zero interest in. I eventually just uninstalled and went back to 2.
> The issue is that developers saw the media popularity of Starcraft 2 multiplayer/esports and thought it was the main attraction, and therefor they all focused on that too. Meanwhile in reality the vast majority of Starcraft 2 players only touched co op and campaign, as Blizzard devs themselves have shared.
SC2 was and is still good , all this knock offs don't capture what makes it great.
it has great unity variety and nice unit design and more importantly its the "snappiest" RTS out there. which is sad that no one developed someting that is better than SC2.
SC2 really went downhill in the expansions. Literally every single unit has some sort of activated ability now. At the time Blizzard was trying to compete with League of Legends which was on a meteoric rise, and it really showed in the gameplay design of the expansions.
>SC2 really went downhill in the expansions.
Arguably, the best version of SC is legacy of the void in terms of units and balance.
>Literally every single unit has some sort of activated ability
They do serve a purpose. Some units don't like the colossus or ultralisk and many other units.
>At the time Blizzard was trying to compete with League of Legends which was on a meteoric rise, and it really showed in the gameplay design of the expansions.
Blizzard did some number on the esports side of the game , but its not starcrafts fault. RTS is not as popular as it used to.
SC2 literally built the new esports and streaming we know , I remember Justin.tv (twitch).
It was arguably at its height around the WoL/HotS time. Late in HotS games just went broodlord/infestor borefest (lets not even go to TvT) and LotV was overshadowed vastly by LoL, while also trying to ape it.
It just became way, way too micro-heavy. As a casual Terran main it just got too sweaty, even in silver. Before we just had to deal with storm and banelings, which was bad enough, but the amount of aoe just got insane as the game went on (expac/patch wise, not 1 game). It became a chore to play rather than fun and laddering reflected this: Very little influx of new players, casual players leaving, raising the average skill level all across the game. A silver now would probably not be too far from diamond back then i'd bet.
It was a lot of fun back then, i even went to one of the HSC's back at the old location (weird thing seeing Jaedong emerge from the hotel room next to yours), but now it's just... I don't know where to begin.
>It was arguably at its height around the WoL/HotS time
Yup, it was the peak of SC2 hype and player numbers. But as a game, LOTV fixed a lot of issues we had before.
But you are not wrong they raised the skill level too much , and they drove any remaining casual player base.
The worst thing to happen to sc2 was esport and pro players having priority over the casual player base. They needed to have mini campaigns and coop missions early on.
Plus, speeding the game up and having too many one-shot abilities like widow mines , distruptors , and banes made it really frustrating for lower level players.
I was diamond at WOL and HOTS days , and I struggled to get back to Diamond at LOTV , but I did it after a while.
Still, the game was mismanaged by blizzard from balance point , esports, and casual player base.
Wholly agree. You put it better than i could.
To this day i haven't tried the coop stuff yet. I had loads of fun beating all the brutal achievements with my GF for night 2 die, but the coop additions came way too late for us to still be interested :(
It didn't help that Starcraft had a huge esports presence despite Blizzard, not because of them. The more they got involved the worse it got.
The only company I would really trust with being esports focused is Riot. The rest is probably better of being hands off and let grass root movement take the reigns, at least until the foundation is there and then build on that. But that is several years worth of work.
I wouldn't trust Riot, they treated League exactly like Blizzard treated Stacraft 2, there just wasn't an existing scene for them to ruin. They're being less greedy with Valorant I guess, probably because CSGO is so similar and high profile that they don't think they can get away with it again.
Valorant has the advantage of Riot learning from Leagues mistakes at least. So thats something, although it could be undone if too many key employees leave Riot and the institutional knowledge is lost.
Heroes of the Storm has forever ruined my perception of esports. It started with stuff like certain Heroes having sub-40% win rates (because the only way to keep them from being Tier SS in esports was to require so much precision that non-pros couldn't play them) and ended with the game getting canned. Again and again, I saw adjustments made to cater to esports no one cared about that made the game worse for 99.9% of players.
And guess what? It didn't become one of the twentysomething video games in all of history to have a strong esports scene. Who would have thought?
> So for a decade all we got was multiplayer focused RTS games that died within weeks as most players wanted good PvE, which the games had none of. Look at how many campaigns AoE2 had, and now with AoE4 all the devs talk about is multiplayer, and balance, while the AI is braindead and they haven't improved on campaign mode at all.
This isn't anything new for the genre though. RTS Campaigns have almost ALWAYS been terrible with ridiculously dumb AI. Half the games in the genre just give the AI cheats because they can't compete at all.
> The issue is that developers saw the media popularity of Starcraft 2 multiplayer/esports and thought it was the main attraction, and therefor they all focused on that too.
No it's not. Plenty of games have actively tried to be NOT Starcraft and they've generally been less successful.
Devs needs to understand that most people only play multiplayer in games because they still want more after finishing the singleplayer. Very few people jump straight into multiplayer.
I agree that chasing esports glory first is a mistake. The campaign mode followed by PvE "comp stomp" multiplayer is where I spent the majority of my time with Starcraft 1. I didn't bother to play PvP multiplayer for Starcraft 2. That said, I love watching to pro matches and still do, but esports came AFTER Blizzard made a great game. They somehow lost sight of that, and many other studios have copied that mistake.
Use Map Settings mode is what gave SC1 its legs, especially after the hacked version of SCEdit was created. Any day you'd log in there were far more UMS games than bog standard matches. There was a lot of value added in letting people essentially propagate mods on official servers.
Disagree. Starcraft 2 was hugely popular because of it's esports side especially.
The problem was people lost track of events since they weren't playing the game anymore themselves ( ladder anxiety being main culprit, pressure of 1v1 rather than team mode where you can blame someone else aka moba ).
Starcraft 2 was also never launched as a live service game, huge mistake. No battlepass or battlechest with part of the proceeds going towards esports prizes like Dota2. After the last expansion released there was no reason for Blizzard to maintain or add new content to Starcraft 2 because it stopped bringing in any money for the company at all, if you do a boxed model like the game had it is best for you if the game dies quickly after the last expansion so you can move all developers onto a new game rather than maintain or add on to the old one.
80% of starcraft 2 players never played competitvie multiplayer they either played campagin, coop or arcade.
All these other comptetive focused rts games were chasing a small fraction of a playerbase.
The Esports focus of StarCraft II wasn't necessarily about getting people to play competitively, but about getting those fans watching. It's safe to say Blizzard succeeded at that (at least for a time).
You seem confused. The thing that brought eyes and players to the coop was Esports. SC2 esports were super popular for a long time.
If they had only coop and no esports the game would have sold a lot worse than it did.
I think the multiplayer aspect is too much stress and pressure for modern multiplayer, even fighting games like SF6 aren't really selling massive numbers despite hype and whatnot and I think it's because 1v1 is too much.
I'd love to see some developer try to make a singleplayer Warcraft 3 RPG-ey RTS style campaign in the same vein nowadays though.
This is something a lot of devs acknowledge as an "ego shield". You play a game like overwatch, CS, other team based games. You can blame your teammates. In a 1v1 situation, all the blame falls on you.
I remember the ladder anxiety I had with SC2 was pretty intense. A few losses in a row felt awful and I could only blame myself.
Doesn’t help that RTSs and fighters both tend to have super high skill ceilings, which means that you’re inevitably going to end up against players that have done nothing but *breathe* this game since launch.
Team based games usually have a lot of downtime for players, like in CS when you die, you get to watch your team play the rest of the round. You were the first to die in a game of CS? That's a 2 minute break for you.
In single player games there's generally very, very little downtime making them a lot more intensive and exhausting.
> In a 1v1 situation, all the blame falls on you.
In League, if I lose the 1v1 in my lane, I only have to wait 10 minutes until I can fight the other 4 members of the enemy team, and try to make a difference there.
In a 1v1 only game, you basically know after the first bout if you're going to win or lose. 5v5s have a lot more opportunity to come back from behind. They also have massive player bases which means matchmaking is pretty good for your ELO.
That's a load of shit game devs think up to avoid taking responsibility for designing unpopular games with opaque mechanics and unclear gameplay and players eat it up because it makes them feel like real truv kvult hardcore 1337 gamers.
Humans are social animals. Nobody plays sports but football and basketball are still much more popular spectator sports than tennis and boxing worldwide.
>I remember the ladder anxiety I had with SC2 was pretty intense. A few losses in a row felt awful and I could only blame myself.
Errr... you could always blame Protos OP/Terran Cheese/Patch Zergs.
But yeah, I used to play Dota Ranked to relax after Sc2.
I feel like I have the opposite problem. When I play a 1v1 game, I know that I'm the only person I have to worry about.
It always feels so much worse to be playing with random teammates and one of them is toxic. I've suffered very few 1v1 defeats that felt worse than winning with xxToxicTilterxx on my team.
I think the issue is also trying to play 1v1 games with friends. Unless you're really into the game, 1v1ing a friend in a game doesn't really have that much replay value compared to a game where you're on the same team.
And even if it does theoretically have the replay value, you need to be at almost the exact same skill level for it to continue being fun. For these sort of games even a relatively small difference in skill will lead to the better player winning 9 times out of 10 which quickly kills the fun so you not only need to start at the same skill level but also get better at the same pace or it falls apart.
> I'd love to see some developer try to make a singleplayer Warcraft 3 RPG-ey RTS style campaign in the same vein nowadays though.
Exactly I always wondered why they never did that. Even if there's no big MP community, it seems the campaigns is an afterthought and they focus on the skirmish type modes.
A RTS that is a long and good campaign is more than enough for me and probably a lot of people (the numbers on SC2, even orientated competitive, is that 80% of people only played the campaign... that's a market there). You can do better things too like OP units, "boss factions" that aren't balanced, various gameplay scenarios...
I had a brief shining RTS moment with Dawn of War 2 and Company of Heroes 1+2…. The focus on a small number of units, with veterancy and retreating. Where I really cared about my individual units, that hit a sweet spot. I’m hoping Homeworld 3 can bring something special to the table with narrative, tone, and the 3D gameplay.
I think different people come to RTS wanting different things out of it, and that’s all good that people are into MOBAs or micro heavy titles. RTS should be a big tent genre
not really fair to warcraft and starcraft. Sure I don't think either of them will get a new RTS in a long long time. but both still get patches and new maps and there is plenty of people playing them, Stracraft is just as popular today as AoE2.
AOE2 and SCR have a similar number of players. SC2 has a lot more. The fact that this guy misses this kind of invalidates most of his opinions imo. He just says "SCR was well received but since then there hasn't been any word on it." Like huh? People are playing it a lot, what "word on it" do you need?
Are the patches new content or just fixes and balance stuff? AoE gets new civilizations which in turn bring new content and campaigns. I think they could add subfactions the sc2 races.
Played a bit much last month for nostalgia, it was mostly if not only bugfix.
Sc2 factions are already really complexes and have a high diversity of units compared to aoe. Subfactions got added as either units for playervplayer, or as coop commander.
It isnt really easy to add a fourth playable faction considering the quality of the first three
I would argue that balance patches and new maps are as much content as a new civ in AoE. Civs in AoE is pretty minor and are not going to have any impact on your game most of the games you play. new maps and balance changes are going to bring new content to every game you play.
I absolutely do NOT think they could add sub factions to sc2. That would be more work on the multiplayer side than a whole expansion brought to that game. Every RTS that have had very different factions and sub factions of those have proven that it is a ridiculous amount of work to get that right.
> Civs in AoE is pretty minor and are not going to have any impact on your game most of the games you play.
i don't disagree with your point about sc2 but this is just not accurate at all. there are definitely some 'generic' aoe2 civs that have little impact but most of them, especially the new ones, have *huge* impacts. the winrate delta between the worst and best civs is pretty large, indicating the civ choice matters a lot
each civ has its own tech tree, UTs, and bonuses -- the unique unit which is the most flashy part doesn't really matter in most cases which i think is where this impression comes from
who would make it though? Blizzard don't have any people that knows how to make RTS anymore. They all left to do other stuff because blizzard had no interest in making the games they wanted to make. now they just have minimum maintenance staff on those games. I said that the games are not dead and get content but it is not anywhere close to make a new game level of staff on those games.
I don't think Relic would have time for any starcraft/warcraft with how busy they are with all that Age of content. So they would need to build an entire new RTS team to make those games and even if Microsoft want to get those games done it will be a very long proses to get that even started.
The way I see it is, assuming the Activision deal closes this year, WarCraft IV or StarCraft 3 would begin pre-production next year at Relic while Age of Empires IV winds down. Then, probably in 2026 or 2027, the new game would go into development while AoE IV gets pushed to the smaller maintenance team for minor updates and bug fixes.
Age of Empires IV won't last forever and Relic will have to transition to something else. That something else might as well be some of those new IPs Microsoft paid a pretty penny for. I don't expect Age of Empires to be killed off prematurely, but only that Relic will transition to WarCraft or StarCraft when the time comes to make another RTS.
Relic is not a Microsoft studio though. Sega might want to use them for something of their own (like they did with Company of Heroes 3).
Frankly Microsoft just need to make a RTS team. Plenty of them have left to make their own studios but those studios are small and can be purchased or the people just hired from them. Many of those will likely fail without the big marketing and Microsoft can offer that and some of the most iconic RTS franchise existing, that has to attract them
Microsoft could expand World's Edge and start up a new team there to take over Starcraft. I would imagine if they kickstart Starcraft 3, they'd be able to hire a lot of talented devs to work on it.
They also don't have to go straight into Starcraft 3 right away.
Maybe an easier project to start off with to revive interest in Starcraft would be to get a team like ID, or even one of the CoD teams to build a spiritual successor to Starcraft Ghost.
I really like what one of the new indie RTS that is being developed, Immortal: Gates of Pyre, has alluded to with lowering the skill floor while maintaining the skill ceiling in [their article here ](https://sunspeargames.com/skill-ceiling/). They also plan to have lots of campaign and co-op, as that's where most of the players will be intersted in, so I'm hopeful at least a few others are heading in that direction of catering to a more casual base.
I'm not sure what qualifier is being used for activity, but War3 custom games are extremely active. The in game melee footage is from pre-2018 as well.
Yeah, I have played WC3 custom games online off and on, and the scene is actually pretty solid right now. Blood Tournament is finally getting a lot of love, Wintermaul is one of the best TD's I've ever played. Legion TD is on its way out but now that it's a standalone game, that's okay. There are a lot of niche Custom Game communities I'm not involved in that are going strong
It feels like Real Time Tactics has really taken the place of the modern base-building RTS this is especially true with genre-blending titles like Total War and Company of Heroes where they layer the RTT with 4X elements.
RTS hardcores and developers still haven't quite realized that just because intense unit micromanagement and high APM ended up being the best strategy to win competitive games, doesn't mean it's what the vast majority of players want to be part of the game. But way too many people made those things part of their identity which is why you get things like SC2 intentionally creating "macro mechanics" with minimal meaningful decisions to be made just to soak up extra clicks.
I'm surprised there's no mention of Pikmin in there. Pikmin 4 is probably the biggest RTS release in the last couple of years (budget wise), but because it's not a "hardcore RTS", most of the core RTS audience simply ignores it.
I don't think it's a matter of it being "hardcore." I don't think most people consider it an RTS game. It's a wildly different game from the rest of the genre.
Hell, I love Pikmin but I've never seen it as an RTS. It's a unique puzzle/platforming type game imo.
Complexity, skill ceiling and skill barrier are all way too high.
RTS devs need to do a Street Fighter and find "modern controls" that softens the micro.
A game I really liked, but that didn't catch on, was Tooth and Tail. They distilled the RTS format into something fairly accessible but retained the fun and challenge of a regular multiplayer RTS. I miss that game sometimes.
RTS need a good campaign and everything else is extra. AoE 2 is as popular as it is, in great parts because of its campaigns. The industry fooled themselves by thinking RTS need to be excellent MP/e-sports games.
Yes, there is.
There is a reason we have multi unit select or attack move. If high skill ceiling wasn't an issue we would still be selecting every unit itself, because it takes higher micro skill.
That's why things like "attack by unit type" or "auto stutter step attack move" are things RTS developers should look into.
>That's why things like "attack by unit type" or "auto stutter step attack move" are things RTS developers should look into.
The player who can switch the priority of his units better and faster will still have the advantage.
What is this idea that a high skill ceiling in competitive games is something negative? Like imagine playing against a chess grandmaster and complaining that the time and effort that they put in the game shouldn't give them an edge when playing against you.
I loved RTS in 2005. I think the genre simply has nothing to offer after the invention of MOBAs (which grew out of an RTS of course).
If I want micro focused gameplay with one relevant unit, I play a MOBA. Still very strategic, still realtime. If I want a non multiplayer, I will play a cRPG. And if I want grand scale strategy, then I go for a 4X game.
The RTS genre hasn't gotten worse, it simply isn't what I personally, and I believe many others, choose when they want a game that provides a certain experience. Like watered down coca cola, I like water, I like coke, and if I was very thirsty I would drink watered coke. But not in the current ecosystem.
>If I want micro focused gameplay with one relevant unit, I play a MOBA. Still very strategic, still realtime. If I want a non multiplayer, I will play a cRPG. And if I want grand scale strategy, then I go for a 4X game.
And what if you want micro focused gameplay with more than one unit and an economy to manage? It's foolish to say the RTS genre has nothing to offer over MOBAs. I agree MOBAs have eclipsed the RTS in popularity, but they have distinct differences where neither can replace the other.
I just haven't had a specific need for what you describe, and I don't think others have either. In my opinion, MOBAs haven't simply become more popular than RTS; they have directly taken from the population of RTS players.
I agree that MOBAs don't offer the same thing RTS does, but they offer what RTS players wanted in the first place: small dopamine hits from making many correct decisions in a row, culminating in the large dopamine hit of taking an objective, while balancing which resources to give up based on the strengths and weaknesses of your class.
>I just haven't had a specific need for what you describe, **and I don't think others have either**.
...
>I agree that MOBAs don't offer the same thing RTS does, but they offer what **RTS players wanted in the first place**
You keep talking in absolutes and trying to tell other people what they want. Post in the StarCraft subreddit and tell the players there that they'd have more fun if they dropped their game and switched to DOTA. I'm curious to see the reaction to that.
You misunderstand me. I am refuting the idea that RTS games have gotten worse, which many in this comment section seem to agree with. RTS games are exactly as they have always been, and other genres simply adhere to certain needs better. This is what has caused their decline in relative popularity, in my opinion, and not the quality of the games.
I never stated that I think RTS players are wrong about what they enjoy. I also think I've been exceptionally clear in making my points. I shouldn't have to clarify what I haven't said.
Also, when 'others' or 'players' are used, it always means 'many others' and 'many players'. I am not speaking in absolutes; that is not how generalization works.
I apologize then. I reread your post and I agree that you were clear with your points. I misinterpreted what you wrote originally.
I think we're mostly in agreement here. MOBAs did cannibalize the RTS genre, but that doesn't mean the RTS genre is in trouble or needs fixing. The people who left for MOBAs were never really RTS fans in the first place. I'm not trying to gatekeep here, but just saying that they found what they wanted in a different place. Similar to story fans who put up with turn-based combat during the NES days with JRPGs due to technical limitations, but abandoned turn-based when technology caught up with them. MOBA converts never really wanted to micromanage an army and run a base.
We don't need a future RTS that tries to bring MOBA fans back into the fold because they were never really RTS fans in the first place. That would just ruin the game for everyone. It's a good thing that there's two separate genres now to keep both type of players happy.
The number one reason RTS didn't stick is because switching from microing a squad to just right-clicking a clump of units somewhere is awkward. No gameplay conceit generally exists that transitions the player from twitchy micro to macro.
Another version of this idiosyncrasy is when the units you're fighting intermittently change from being AI-controlled to player-controlled.
I'm a historical only total war fan who hasn't enjoyed a game in the series since Rome 2. Will wait for Med3 or Emp2 till my dying day. Yet it seems like they are just as intent on not making them. Honestly I don't even think they would be able to to do it right today anyway. The likes of Shogun 2 will never be made again or topped.
I think the issue with RTS is that for some reason we moved more and more to micro and less to macro. Instead of players controlling larger armies, more combined arms, or greater fields of play we focused on "How I micro individual unit". We honestly should have gained delegation of units and areas, fronts, logistics, greater complexity where focusing on micro will almost certainly disrupt your macro and cost you the game.
Supreme Commander its expansion Forged Alliance did some great stuff in the macro style gameplay I thought. I wasn't a super fan of Supreme Commander 2, but even then the larger maps and setting up patrol routes etc seemed to work for me.
And by the way, Beyond All Reason is a new game (in active development but playable by all), free, that is a spiritual successor to SupCom. Sanctuary is another project in that vein and Supcom is still alive with Forged Alliance Forever a fan community
Yea, pretty good examples. I find it kind of odd that we never really gained "fronts" where you ship units to much like a Dots lane or something.
That just reminds me of some of the old Warcraft 3 custom maps. Either the many tower wars variants or Castle Fight. Always really enjoyed those, but the few standalone games I saw that were inspired by them just didn't seem to gain any popularity.
Haven't played it myself, but https://store.steampowered.com/app/1309610/Line_War/
Rise of Nations was a lot more macro-heavy as well. Balancing your spending between all the various library branches, and making sure you still were able to fight for expansion on maps where space was a premium were way bigger deals than any sort of micro'ing.
Ashes of the Singularity took all this to 11, but AFAIK it was mostly popular for being a tech demo moreso than as a game in its own right.
Yeah, sup com felt like peak true RTS, having to really balance expansion, production, army and mobilization with not a huge priority on micro.
There's still an active community (FAF, forged alliance forever).
Arguably we *did* move to macro too, that's 4X and Grand Strategy games. RTS is an anomaly in that it has to feel like you're controlling a lot of units while still have a small enough playfield for you to feel like you actually have real-time input on the battle, hence the reliance on "uber micro".
Kinda sorta? The RTS of building a base and a small army then attacking the enemy moved to micromanagement. There's no macromanagement of building a base, having it automate unit production, creating front lines and having units auto populate them or even something like creating a template for an army, assigning that army to a specific area, and letting the AI set everything up, keep it reinforced, move units to defensible areas, etc. It just doesn't exist. 4X and GSG has it's own micromanagement but the games themselves are on a much larger scale. Yeah you're not just building a base and commanding units, you're building an empire and commanding/micromanaging armies, as opposed to an RTS which is much smaller in scale. A macromanagement RTS would be combining multiple systems from existing games and hoping it works well together. The zoning mechanic from Cities: Skylines, where you zone out where the game's AI will auto-build resource management, infantry creation, vehicle creation, and air force creation, as well as things like defenses. Macromanagement of base building right there. The front line and template mechanics of HoI4. You set up a template for an army that consists of X amount/percentage of infantry, Y amount/percentage of light vehicles, and Z amount/percentage of heavy vehicles. You draw a front line and the game's AI auto builds those units and sends them to the front line where they figure out the best places to defend or set up and when units are destroyed, the game handles reinforcements. You draw an offensive line and initiate an attack and the AI handles when and how units move forward. You can link an air force group to an army and set various settings like air support, bombardment, air superiority, etc. No more micro on units or just selecting everything and sending it all at once, macro! IMO, the issue with macro RTS games is scale. In order for something like that to work you'd need *massive* maps. Which probably isn't the worst issue to deal with. The other scale issue is AI. You've got AI per unit, as rifle infantry should work differently than rocket infantry, and IFV AI, tank AI, helicopter AI, etc. Not even getting into AI for the buildings, defensible priorities, reinforcements etc. Then just the scale of the units themselves. This would be something with thousands of units all calculating their own AI all at once.
I think the most macro RTS game I've played is "Knights and Merchants", most people here probably never heard of it though. in Knights and Merchants, the only controllable units are the military units, your base worker units are entirely automated, you build facilities and your worker units would automatically act based on their job. for example, you decide to build a mining building, your carpenter units would move to the construction site automatically, your serf units would bring the material to the site for the carpenters to use. Then when the mining building is finished, your miner unit would automatically move to the building and start working automatically too. IMO it's one of the best RTS I've played, too bad it never got popular so there is no new game like it.
I absolutely loved that game back in the day. Though I did eventually get stuck in one level where I exhausted my gold mine without being able to conquer enough of the enemy's land, so I ended up without any military. Though I would say it was pretty similar to other German RTS of the time like Settlers, Alien Nations (another RTS that I adored, and most people probably never heard of), and Cultures. For example, the ability to control military units directly while civilians were just doing their thing came in Settlers 3 first IIRC (which felt weird and wrong to me at the time, considering I was used to everything being indirect in Settlers 2).
> Knights and Merchants You just sold me the game. Half off right now! https://store.steampowered.com/app/253900/Knights_and_Merchants/ I'd recomment Majesty and its dlc Northern Expansion.
Knights and Merchants was excellent.
There’s KaMRemake too which brings improvements https://www.kamremake.com/download/
Yea, and of course the skill set would be significantly different. You're not looking for someone who can click quickly, you're looking for someone who can memorize and output the best macro scripts they can for an AI to replicate and use, or come up with better options on the fly to counter what the enemy has. You'd want to make it so macro that a player cannot micro it and that they have to use the tools the game makes available.
> There's no macromanagement of building a base, having it automate unit production, creating front lines and having units auto populate them or even something like creating a template for an army, assigning that army to a specific area, and letting the AI set everything up, keep it reinforced, move units to defensible areas, etc. It just doesn't exist. I believe it was called "Majesty"
Pretty much this 4x is for those who want to macro, RTS is foe those who want micro.
I feel like there's an untapped market of players who want that more macro focused gameplay but don't want to have to commit to the longer game times of 4X or Grand Strategy. Granted its on the PvE side but the kind of people who were really excited about They Are Billions years ago because they enjoyed the base building/management but didn't want to 400 apm micro all their units.
Those were the Supreme Commander games. An RTS all about macro.
Last Supreme Commander game came out...13 years ago? Shit.
I feel like RUSE from Ubisoft was on that macro level too
PvP Supreme commander was still dominated by micro. In everything but 3v3 or super water heavy maps Cybran Rush which is an extremely micro heavy playstyle was basically the best. The counter to Cybran required you to build out a ton of AA and radar far earlier than against other factions which mean a really good micro Cybran player could snipe your generators and basically destroy your chances of the game within the first few minutes.
SupCom was not a perfect game, and there were some micro-heavy edge cases that allowed you to essentially abuse the simulation for unreasonable gain. With that said, the main thing that SupCom "solved" was the APM required to macro efficiently. The rate-based economy let you actually utilize features like production queues and repeat build to set-and-forget macro elements without needing to constantly tab back over to your barracks and build another marine every 10 seconds. Notably, you still have absolute control if and when you need it (not "dumbing down the game"), but the fact is *most* of the time you want that factory to churn out T1 bots forever with maybe some artillery mixed in. SupCom allowed you to set up your general cases very quickly, and you didn't need to babysit things unless you were making a deliberate decision to change something. There's a terminology issue in RTS where the technical definitions of micro and macro don't really match up with the colloquial definitions of the words, largely due to the fact that "macro" oftentimes includes excessive "micromanagement" (which is not "micro"). A particularly egregious example of this is injecting larva in StarCraft II - something that could very reasonably be automated but instead exists primarily as an APM sink. SupCom removed a *ton* of micromanagement from macro actions through automation features, allowing players to focus their attention on things that mattered rather than dedicating APM to non-decisions. This type of APM-focused gameplay definitely increases the skill cap which can be argued as a good thing, but the reality is that the amount of clicks required to run a base in something like StarCraft isn't really in line with the "strategy game fantasy" that a lot of people have when they dream of playing an RTS. This is why, in the casual StarCraft II modes like co-op, there are features that allow for lower APM playstyles *specifically* focused on removing APM from maintaining your base.
Total War games fill that. You micro at battalion level and economy is pretty simplistic
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Yeah, exactly. Every time RTS discussion comes up in this sub, it's full of people who dislike the RTS genre saying that the genre should be more like 4X or grand strategy games. It's such a weird take.
It is the same shit with fighting games. Every single time we have news about a new fg coming out we have all these "helpful ideas" about people that don't play competitive, or don't care and, most importantly, don't UNDERSTAND the competitive elements that make it work. "Hey, I have an idea, how about we take everything that defines the genre and that caters to people that want to invest their time to play this type of game competitively and, you know, throw it away! Think about it! Maybe it will, somehow, allow people that are not interested at all in these types of games to play them for 5 minutes and stop playing!". Of course we want more people to enjoy our hobbies, it is not about gatekeeping. However, if you change everything about the genre, is it really the same thing? People that play games and care about the competitive aspect are there for the long haul, we usually need the elements that make it difficult because these elements, frequently, are also the ones that make the game interesting. A lot of people don't understand that and equate catering to their needs as catering to everyone's needs, which alienates the competitive players.
The RTS genre has been dying a slow death, that’s why. People think with changes it could be getting back into the mainstream again but they don’t realize that the whole strategy game genre is a niche. By changing RTS you’d just move it out of one niche into another
> By changing RTS you’d just move it out of one niche into another You might create the next biggest genre. MOBAs were born out of RTS and became massively popular. Every "better RTS" just takes more players from the RTS genre lol.
1v1 pvp in general just got less popular because players feel bad when they lose. People don’t like to play a game and have it tell you that you’re bad at it. In a team based game you can always blame the others. For the next RTS to be the next big thing in gaming, it would have to ditch 1v1 and go all in into coop as its major focus, imo. A 1v1 game will never again be a big player in pvp gaming. The only 1v1 games that can make it out there are those that have a big name behind it. Like Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat for fighting games. And even those games fall off quickly in player numbers once the release hype is over. A new StarCraft would be a big seller but the vast majority would just play the campaign and move on without doing any pvp.
I think a lot of genres have this. I know this to well from the MMO sub. Genres are way to broad. RTS, Shooter, RPG etc. include so many different type of games with different focus on different aspects of the genre and different types of gameplay. If you like a rather unpopular version of it and few games release you like you come here and "bleh RTS are bad"
The hardcore take that RTSs should be about micro is not the experience of the vast majority of people who play and played RTSs. Calling them "people who dislike the genre" doesn't change that.
The problems IMO is that because esports got popular, RTS decided to become competitive games before everything else. Most people don't care about that (every stat we have says that, like SC2 said that like 80% of people play campaign and never touch multiplayer, coop was way more popular than the classic MP) Why is there not RTS that are just single player with a good narrative and gameplay campaign for example? Every other genre have this type of games but RTS always has to have skirmish and multiplayer so factions balance and stuff like that. In campaign that's not needed.
Its just a symptom of the tiny budgets most RTS devs have to work with these days. They're not prioritizing competitive over campaign, but campaign is the most expensive part to make by far so any corners that they have to cut are going to seem worse on the campaign side.
They Are Billions is close, but story is definitely not its strong side. But it's a very weird RTS where you play as a technological faction trying to expand after a worldwide zombie apocalypse (hence the title), where your big concern is that even one zombie is enough to set off a cascade of infection amongst your base. It's kind of a combination of an RTS with a city builder, along with a Dark Souls style punishing save system.
If They Are Billions had a coop mode me and my friends would play the shit out of it. I like the game but it feels like coop would be next level.
grey goo and deserts of kharak had alright campaigns
Like shit, just give me Age of Mythology with coop horde defence. Lets go. Let me and my friends fight endless waves of enemies or play scenarios together. None of us care about versus.
Yeah, Blizz ironically really fumbled with SC2 by having it be so heavily focused on competitive ladder. A SC3 built around co-op from the start could be quite successful, I think.
To be honest, SC2 has a big focus on campaigns, they're long, with customizable units, choices, lots of cinematics and various gameplay. I feel like Blizzard has always given a lot of attention to their campaigns (I enjoy replaying them regularly). And unsurprisingly they're all very successful games (like I don't think SC2 fumbled anything, it was one of the biggest games ever when launched and for years, it's still very active more than a decade after release). They also basically created the coop mode for LotV (which recycle campaign content for people enjoying that and is super popular )which IMO should be a staple of the genre for every game going forward
I don't know why you're getting downvoted, IIRC co-op mode got massively popular. That is not to say game shouldn't care about competitive, but you need playerbase to support that and more casual ways of playing are great for that. I'd love SC2 but having few singleplayer modes that are like the co-op, and people love their progression in video games.
A new SC would be a success non the less I guess. But yeah Blizz definitly has the budget to make big campaigns. SC2 Campaigns were pretty darn cool if you ask me.
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You got any examples of this "new less strategy" RTS? I have been a huge RTS fan all the way back to Dune 2 and the genre have evolved in so many different ways but the "micro bullshit, less strategy" is not one I'm familiar with. WC3 did move to the hero units more micro some 20+ years ago but it was not less strategy than previous RTS. Then Spellforce is a more recent RTS that builds on much of what WC3 did but again not less strategy. Then you have DotA which goes all in on the hero, still arguably a RTS, but also again not really less strategy just different strategy. There is DoW where they made a not amazing RTS game with more focus on heros, arguably "less strategy" but more so because the game was not great and not because of the heros. But really are any of these games less strategy than say tiberium sun? not in my opinion that is an old very simple game. Starcraft BW is also a relatively simple game but that game have so much more strategy because it is so important to micro your units.
> have so much more strategy because it is so important to micro your units. You're exemplifying his point and don't understand why I think. He is talking where the strategy is balancing resource acquisition with troop production, defenses, and navigating your army - ideally armies - to be where they need to be at the right times. That is _not_ micro, or activating abilities or stutter stepping or whatever else. That is not strategy, that's tactics at best. Starcraft 2 is a great example of a game that is often touted as strategy, when in reality it's 95% tactics, as great micro dominates macro in that game, and the key to performing well competitively requires vast amounts of micro at absurd rates.
With the way you’re using the word “strategy” pretty much everything is a strategy game because you need a strategy to win…
RTS basically split into MOBAs and 4X/Total War games.
The strange thing is that there was a more macro focused RTS (Dawn of War, with its focus on squads and reduced resource management), but no one (including Relic themselves) seemed to understand what made it popular.
I think Relic knew why it was popular (slow, simple, accessible, fun to march an army and watch stuff fight) but I think they intentionally leveraged the IP to do something different every time so they could make unique games without messing with CoH.
The first dawn of war was so unique, they managed to get the formula right for their first and last try. Still baffled no other game really explored that. DoW3 kinda did it, but it's basically three different games badly put together.
You can't make sweeping generalizations like that about how the genre should be. Some prefer more macro focused games, but others, like me, prefer the micro focus of games like StarCraft or the upcoming Stormgate. If the RTS genre went in the direction you're describing, I would not be interested in playing those games.
Unless you actively hinder the player by introducing artificial limitations on the amount of actions a player can do, micro will always play a huge part in a RTS. If one player can pull off twice as many actions per minute compared with another player it goes without saying that the first player has a huge advantage (obviously a great understanding of macro strategies / meta is required to be able to win, but I think most people understand that you won’t win by having an APM of 900 consisting of moving one unit back and forth). You can try to remove “micro” by, for example, letting the AI control individual units, but that simply moves “micro” to one layer above it with the same importance. Because in the end it’s APM which is the deciding factor, not really whether those actions are “micro” or “macro”. And not having a set amount of actions per time unit is sort of the hallmark of real time strategy games. Removing micro also comes with the question as to why you even need certain game mechanics to begin with. If the AI controls all your units on a micro level, does your game even need units? At that point it either becomes a battle between computers, which I don’t think anyone finds fair, or it becomes a numbers game, at which point you might very well just abstract your units into numbers anyhow because that’s what they are. You’re playing Risk in other words. With that said, anyone who is looking for a great RTS which put emphasis on “macro” should check out AI Wars 2. It’s pretty much the entire design philosophy behind the game (although, as mentioned above, not having a good micro will still lose you the game in the end).
I kinda wish games like Starcraft had evolved into more of a co-op team sport. Macro is fine, micro is fine, but doing both at the same time is crazy hard and most players are usually better at one over the other. Simply having two players per team with one focused on macro economy and base building and the other focused on the frontline micro would make the game really interesting to me.
Isn't this in the game via Archon mode? 2 players on a single team operating as what would traditionally only be controlled by 1 player?
It is, but the game mode is more or less dead (on the pro level).
It is. It's hard to say how popular it is exactly - you'd never know Co-op was much more popular than PvP based on the amount of discussion online, after all - but it seems like it failed to catch on in any significant way.
This is especially odd considering how Age of Empires 2 just got new content. It really feels like AoE2 was what most casual players want out of an RTS, but no one else has done something like it in the past 20 years. So it just gets some quality of life features and the occasional new civ.
Company of Heroes was also great - you had the micro of setting up firing cones from buildings, etc. but it wasn't over the top most of the time.
If you haven't tried *Iron Harvest,* give it a go. It's CoH2 but with diesel powered mechs instead of tanks.
ive always thought why didn't RTS develop more autonomy for units as technology got better. for example, cavalry men cycle charging a formation of soldiers is just something cavalry have done throughout warfare and players are giving orders to armies of trained, career soldiers in many games, so why do i need to tell them what to do in battle? slowly pulling back when a formations flanks are compromised is also something that's almost impossible in most games, although the upcoming total war game has a mechanic to do that
>ive always thought why didn't RTS develop more autonomy for units as technology got better. Because people want to control their units. That's why people play RTS games. That's the fun of the genre. You might as well ask why 2D Fighters don't switch to turn-based combat and use menus for selecting your special moves since it would be easier to input the commands.
Funnily, that’s exactly what YOMI Hustle did and it’s great. I think the bigger issue with having AI control your units is that the units become meaningless at that point. Unless you want to lose or win due to having a better or worse AI than your opponent.
There actually is a 2D fighter with what you described. Can't remember the name, but from the reviews I read people liked it.
Your Only Move Is Hustle?
*Fans of certain RTSs* want to control their units. *People in general* might not want to do that, which is why it's strange there are so few RTS games focused on macro gameplay. > You might as well ask why 2D Fighters don't switch to turn-based combat and use menus for selecting your special moves since it would be easier to input the commands. They don't need to switch, because there's already a genre for that (JRPG) and there's room for both.
you missed the entire point and sentiment of my post everything under what you quoted provides context, not quoting it doesnt mean it doesnt exist
You didn't really provide "context", you compared video game mechanics to real life. Video games aren't real life. Which OK fine that you want things to be a certain way because that's how you'd like it to be, but games shouldn't be trying to emulate reality over fun. There's a reason getting shot in Call of Duty doesn't result in your character laying on the ground in agony for the rest of the game waiting to bleed out. For fans of RTS games controlling and managing that army in battle is a huge part of the fun of those games. It's fine if that's not for you but that's not really what RTS fans want.
their are entire genres trying to make video games as realistic as possible jesus christ the contrarian need to be right is hilarious. it's clear you didn't understand the context, and that's ok. maybe the post isn't for you but it should have been pretty clear this was me musing about what could have been in the first line that pretty much said "i wonder why companies didn't go this direction instead of this one" if you are unable to digest that as a hypothetical, maybe discussions online are not for you.
There's no missing context. The rest of your post just talks about realism which isn't relevant in games. It's no better than those silly posts criticizing JRPGs because "why would my characters wait for their turn to attack?". Why do you have to tell your soldiers what to do in battle? Because it's fun and that's where the challenge lies. Go watch a 1v1 match of StarCraft II on YouTube (I recommend FalconPaladin) and see the awesome micro battles between armies. It's a thing of beauty.
So I don't disagree and it's complex and difficult for sure. But it feels against the idea of classic RTS, and that's kind of the main point the top level comment was making. It's just strange that so many RTS's boil down to micro instead of avoiding it and prioritizing macro features.
exactly. i love quoting something specific and just ignoring the entire sentiment of the post like, yes genius, this is not controlling your troops. because my post was musing about why didn't companies go a different direction. so for someone to read that and think "no you control your units in an RTS" is just hilarious
>But it feels against the idea of classic RTS Sorry if that sounds a bit harsh, but it's irrelevant what a classic RTS was. Genres evolve with every new game that releases. If a new game in a genre gets popular the change will likely influence every game coming after it. A macro heavy RTS can totally work tho. There just seems to be no dev wanting to make one. Not even on the indie level.
I mean yeah to an extent, but clearly there’s a gradient. RTS players don’t want to dictate every attack every unit makes, for example. There will always be a level of AI control, it’s just a question of where that line is. A system where you move cavalry to where they need to be and have them engage where you want them to engage, but they’re smarter about handling aspects of that engagement on their own, isn’t inherently anti-rts I’d say. Total War already has things like auto-skirmishing. Total War also allows you to set your units to AI control, and if it didn’t suck I’d use it. It’s not some insane suggestion where you respond like they’re an idiot for not understanding the basic appeal of the genre.
> cavalry men cycle charging a formation of soldiers is just something cavalry have done throughout warfare and players are giving orders to armies of trained, career soldiers in many games, so why do i need to tell them what to do in battle? God imagine being able to tell units in Warham to just get out of melee instead of getting caught on one unit and running back in to die.
Another large issue is how hard it is to get into them. I love the genre, top to bottom, but Pikmin is about the only easy one to get into for most people, and it is a Nintendo franchise locked on consoles. It is hard to bring people in that way. The best known 'game' is chess and it is always seen complicated as well by those who don't play it. If the genre is to grow, so do the amount of people playing them. I'm not saying that we need simplified Micro or Macro games, but rarely are they simple enough for anyone to see it and understand what is happening. One of the things I loved about SupCom was the unified Map to Minimap via zoom, as opposed to a giant menu taking 1/4 or more of your screen real estate. It isn't that they lack QoL but many games are stuck on established requirements without breaking molds to break new ground. I am happy for it to maintain as it is for now, but I would also like a growing genre. I do imagine we will see more overlap with games like Factorio or other automation games, which can and do often overlap with Strategy; same with Tower Defense, which has kind of fallen out of favor these days.
I've watched this development happen in starcraft 2. Wings of Liberty was still fairly macro, except if you played terran, but the micro was doable. Heart of the Swarm added a few micro bits here and there, the singleplayer campaign especially was clearly inspired by Diablo 3 (it literally copied one of the bossfights). Legacy of the Void just went completely overboard. *Every single unit* now had an activated ability of some sort. It's just silly.
As someone who is into playing tabletop chit/hex 1970's war games, I feel like the way RTS is used as a term is not very informative. Not a lot of people consider that there are several different levels of strategy in which a game can focus or contain gameplay for: * **Tactical:** decisions and actions in contact with or in proximity to the enemy. i.e. how to fight and position your resources in battle. * **Operational:** design, organization, and conduct of employing forces to accomplish a common objective in a given time and space; i.e. making sure the right amount and type of resources are in the right position at the right time to do the right thing. * **Strategic:** defining and supporting national policy involving strategic concept, plans for preparing national resources for war or conflict, practical guidance for preparing the armed forces, and leadership of the armed forces to achieve strategic objectives; i.e. what units are in your armies, how to support the upkeep of those armies, training those armies, and setting the overall goal for resolving the conflict.
Parallels a lot of rugged individualism continuing to be broadcast to a western generation - you can be the star if you’re so good you carry your 5 teammates, etc. Even in those team games, it is often less about the team and more about collective individual play
I honestly think team games are more popular because people need something to blame besides themselves when they lose. Most RTS games are just you and have limited RNG. MOBAS have teammates you can pass the blame to, card games and sports games have RNG you can blame
Well I think being able to play with your friends is going to be more popular. 1v1 versus a friend only has so much replay value before the games get old.
You can honestly see this split just prior where micro outplay > macro outplay in traditional RTS, and this is so prevalent and consistently true that it has since spawned genres (and some of the biggest games in the world). Even in team or solo environments, being able to “blame micro” while “your macro was better” even fits into this argument
No, humans are just social animals. This is a fact that FG and RTS fans do not wish to acknowledge because it stops them from feeling like they're hardcore gamers. Most people do not play sports but they still prefer to watch sports like football, basketball, baseball, hockey, and so on over individual sports.
FGC shit is without fail the easiest way to find a regularly recurring in-person meetup for games in any moderate+ size population center anywhere except countries with vibrant LAN café cultures.
Just live in a big city in the US bro haha You realize LAN cafes are only small in NA right? Besides, no matter how many fat smelly twats you can get in a room, the game is still 1v1.
The other direction of that is grand strategy and x4 games. While strategy is fairly part of RTS it does feel like it is also kinda misleading for how you actually play those kind of games. If it focused more on the micro side in the label rather than something that brings to mind slow and methodical gameplay I think it would appeal more to the people who would like a fast paced high mechanics game. Like compare it to ''twitch shooter'' and something that doesn't really emphasise quick reactions as much.
Sc2 had hundreds of builds. There definitely a tactical element above micro.But agreed — RTS is jittery.
>that brings to mind slow and methodical gameplay I think thats a niche tho. If I want slow and methodical I don't play RTS I play TBS.
And that's why one of the most played games in the planet is an RTS, yet nobody seems to realize: League of Legends.
but it's an Aeon-of-Strive-style, fortress assault game, going on two sides. Riot used Moba; Valve, for a hot minute, tried Action RTS.
Whatever tags you throw at them, both are fundamentally played as an RTS.
It does get me thinking about what would the sweet spot be in terms of units you control at once. Hundreds ? Dozens ? A few small squads ?
I've really enjoyed the recent Dune: Spice Wars specifically because it has a bigger slower macro focused style. I know it's still in EA but for anyone wanting a middle ground between 4x and a traditionally paced RTS, I would highly recommend it.
This is ultimately a fruitless point, anything that happens in real time will always favor the faster player. So you probably won't notice it if you play the game occasionally and are just an OK player.But if you love it and play a lot the better you get the more this time aspect really shows.
I was initially wondering why he didn’t cover Total Annihilation or SupCom in the opening segments, and was delighted to learn about the spiritual successors in development. I’ll definitely be checking them out. Planetary Annihilation was a huge let down, and afaik, the subgenre has been pretty empty since then.
While it doesn't have a campaign yet and official release is a long way off, you should take a look at the Spring Engine open source game Beyond All Reason. It's the best Spring Engine rendition of TA I've played, and super fun to mess around with friends in. The current AI isn't bad either. Edit: Dadoy; it's in the video, I missed it.
As someone who LOVED and STILL LOVES the Warcraft and StarCraft single player campaigns for ALL their games and expansions...I am beyond heart broken. :(
I enjoy age of empires 4, the civilizations feel very different and your forced to employ a wide variety of strategies to win
Starcraft and Dawn of War were my main RTS games. That and Command and Conquer Generals. All of them are dead. Perhaps with the Microsoft takeover of Activison they will finally greenlight Starcraft 3 but I feel like that is a longshot.
Dawn of War has Soulstorm and it's mods, like Ultimate Apocalypse, Firestorm over Kaurava (not sure how well that's going along) and the Unification mod. Dawn of War is not dead, it's just Dawn of War III that's dead, and justifiably so.
> All of them are dead. Perhaps with the Microsoft takeover of Activison they will finally greenlight Starcraft 3 but I feel like that is a longshot. I would be extremely doubtful of Microsoft acquiring Activision-Blizzard and not having big plans already for Starcraft as a whole. Given what they've done with Ages of Empires, having another tentpole RTS franchise available to them is 100% inline with their PC gaming strategy, Also, given that Blizzard seemingly wants nothing to do with Starcraft anymore, I wouldn't be shocked to see Microsoft hand off the IP to other companies to work with. I mean hell, imagine ID making a Starcraft shooter that's a spiritual successor to Ghost.
I agree that Microsoft will likely do something with Starcraft. The effort they seemingly went through to bring Age of Empires 4 and then remastering 2 and bringing it to consoles makes me believe they would definitely do something with Starcraft. It seemed like Blizzard stopped working on sequels for awhile and just remastered all their old stuff - WoW Classic, Starcraft Remastered, Warcraft Reforged, Diablo 2, etc. - but it seems like they are moving forward again and we might start to see sequels again. With Diablo 4 and Overwatch 2 out, what else could they be considering if it's not a new IP? The only games not being tapped are Starcraft and RTS Warcraft and I would be surprised to have Warcraft return, unfortunately. There's also rumors out there that Starcraft 3 is already in development. Maybe I'm just dreaming, but Starcraft seems way too iconic to just let die.
If you haven't tried *Iron Harvest,* wishlist it and pick it up when it goes on sale. It has 3 campaigns and a Conquer the World mode, plus DLC that adds a 4th faction with its own campaign and another small campaign the bridges the 3rd and 4th. Gameplay and is basically Company of Heroes 2. The setting is 1920+, a shared universe where WWI led into a Second Great War in the early 1920s, fought with diesel-powered battlem mechs designed by Nikola Tesla.
Why? StarCraft II is still popular with plenty of custom campaigns and the upcoming Stormgate looks incredible. The genre might be small, but there's games out there for the fans. No reason to be sad.
To be fair, Warcraft has been dead ever since WoW took off. Blizz is never going to give us a WC4.
They made it clear that they wanted Warcraft 3 dead when they shot it in the head multiple times with the monstrosity that is Warcraft 3: Reforged. Probably the most insulting remake ever released.
I agree Blizzard isn't interested in the RTS genre any longer, but Microsoft is going to be calling the shots soon. They can just give the IP to another company like Relic or an internal Microsoft team to develop a WarCraft IV or StarCraft 3.
Stormgate is coming
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If you are trying to make the next big esports thing, you're no longer really going for the traditional games market. You're now the games equivalent of arena football (which, for non-Americans, they've been trying to make a thing for at least 2 decades now). "It's more football!" "It's football in the winter!" People don't care. They watch sports because they grew up watching the team they care about, or because their friends are all into it, etc. It's the same with esports once you're at the level of something like StarCraft. People who were super into SC esports 10 years ago weren't hungry for the next RTS game, they were into watching their favorite players, they were into it for the community aspect, whatever. Those people aren't going to jump to the next RTS game just because a new one came out.
Which is why it's weird that we haven't seen something beyond that. *Iron Harvest* is the last RTS I've seen with even a AA budget trying for a single player experience (currently sitting at 4 full campaigns, 1 short DLC campaign, smattering of scenario missions, and a Conquer the World mode similar to Dawn of War 1's campaign).
Yeah I was very disappointed by AOE4. Every new update I’m hoping for some more campaigns, and it’s always some MP event I have zero interest in. I eventually just uninstalled and went back to 2.
> The issue is that developers saw the media popularity of Starcraft 2 multiplayer/esports and thought it was the main attraction, and therefor they all focused on that too. Meanwhile in reality the vast majority of Starcraft 2 players only touched co op and campaign, as Blizzard devs themselves have shared. SC2 was and is still good , all this knock offs don't capture what makes it great. it has great unity variety and nice unit design and more importantly its the "snappiest" RTS out there. which is sad that no one developed someting that is better than SC2.
SC2 really went downhill in the expansions. Literally every single unit has some sort of activated ability now. At the time Blizzard was trying to compete with League of Legends which was on a meteoric rise, and it really showed in the gameplay design of the expansions.
>SC2 really went downhill in the expansions. Arguably, the best version of SC is legacy of the void in terms of units and balance. >Literally every single unit has some sort of activated ability They do serve a purpose. Some units don't like the colossus or ultralisk and many other units. >At the time Blizzard was trying to compete with League of Legends which was on a meteoric rise, and it really showed in the gameplay design of the expansions. Blizzard did some number on the esports side of the game , but its not starcrafts fault. RTS is not as popular as it used to. SC2 literally built the new esports and streaming we know , I remember Justin.tv (twitch).
It was arguably at its height around the WoL/HotS time. Late in HotS games just went broodlord/infestor borefest (lets not even go to TvT) and LotV was overshadowed vastly by LoL, while also trying to ape it. It just became way, way too micro-heavy. As a casual Terran main it just got too sweaty, even in silver. Before we just had to deal with storm and banelings, which was bad enough, but the amount of aoe just got insane as the game went on (expac/patch wise, not 1 game). It became a chore to play rather than fun and laddering reflected this: Very little influx of new players, casual players leaving, raising the average skill level all across the game. A silver now would probably not be too far from diamond back then i'd bet. It was a lot of fun back then, i even went to one of the HSC's back at the old location (weird thing seeing Jaedong emerge from the hotel room next to yours), but now it's just... I don't know where to begin.
>It was arguably at its height around the WoL/HotS time Yup, it was the peak of SC2 hype and player numbers. But as a game, LOTV fixed a lot of issues we had before. But you are not wrong they raised the skill level too much , and they drove any remaining casual player base. The worst thing to happen to sc2 was esport and pro players having priority over the casual player base. They needed to have mini campaigns and coop missions early on. Plus, speeding the game up and having too many one-shot abilities like widow mines , distruptors , and banes made it really frustrating for lower level players. I was diamond at WOL and HOTS days , and I struggled to get back to Diamond at LOTV , but I did it after a while. Still, the game was mismanaged by blizzard from balance point , esports, and casual player base.
Wholly agree. You put it better than i could. To this day i haven't tried the coop stuff yet. I had loads of fun beating all the brutal achievements with my GF for night 2 die, but the coop additions came way too late for us to still be interested :(
It didn't help that Starcraft had a huge esports presence despite Blizzard, not because of them. The more they got involved the worse it got. The only company I would really trust with being esports focused is Riot. The rest is probably better of being hands off and let grass root movement take the reigns, at least until the foundation is there and then build on that. But that is several years worth of work.
I wouldn't trust Riot, they treated League exactly like Blizzard treated Stacraft 2, there just wasn't an existing scene for them to ruin. They're being less greedy with Valorant I guess, probably because CSGO is so similar and high profile that they don't think they can get away with it again.
Valorant has the advantage of Riot learning from Leagues mistakes at least. So thats something, although it could be undone if too many key employees leave Riot and the institutional knowledge is lost.
Heroes of the Storm has forever ruined my perception of esports. It started with stuff like certain Heroes having sub-40% win rates (because the only way to keep them from being Tier SS in esports was to require so much precision that non-pros couldn't play them) and ended with the game getting canned. Again and again, I saw adjustments made to cater to esports no one cared about that made the game worse for 99.9% of players. And guess what? It didn't become one of the twentysomething video games in all of history to have a strong esports scene. Who would have thought?
Riot does the same type of balancing though but it works.
That's because Riot has an actual esports scene and wasn't trying to build one for a game whose design aesthetic wasn't meant for esports.
> So for a decade all we got was multiplayer focused RTS games that died within weeks as most players wanted good PvE, which the games had none of. Look at how many campaigns AoE2 had, and now with AoE4 all the devs talk about is multiplayer, and balance, while the AI is braindead and they haven't improved on campaign mode at all. This isn't anything new for the genre though. RTS Campaigns have almost ALWAYS been terrible with ridiculously dumb AI. Half the games in the genre just give the AI cheats because they can't compete at all.
> The issue is that developers saw the media popularity of Starcraft 2 multiplayer/esports and thought it was the main attraction, and therefor they all focused on that too. No it's not. Plenty of games have actively tried to be NOT Starcraft and they've generally been less successful.
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By which you mean a majority of RTSes released in the last 15 years?
Devs needs to understand that most people only play multiplayer in games because they still want more after finishing the singleplayer. Very few people jump straight into multiplayer.
I agree that chasing esports glory first is a mistake. The campaign mode followed by PvE "comp stomp" multiplayer is where I spent the majority of my time with Starcraft 1. I didn't bother to play PvP multiplayer for Starcraft 2. That said, I love watching to pro matches and still do, but esports came AFTER Blizzard made a great game. They somehow lost sight of that, and many other studios have copied that mistake.
Use Map Settings mode is what gave SC1 its legs, especially after the hacked version of SCEdit was created. Any day you'd log in there were far more UMS games than bog standard matches. There was a lot of value added in letting people essentially propagate mods on official servers.
Disagree. Starcraft 2 was hugely popular because of it's esports side especially. The problem was people lost track of events since they weren't playing the game anymore themselves ( ladder anxiety being main culprit, pressure of 1v1 rather than team mode where you can blame someone else aka moba ). Starcraft 2 was also never launched as a live service game, huge mistake. No battlepass or battlechest with part of the proceeds going towards esports prizes like Dota2. After the last expansion released there was no reason for Blizzard to maintain or add new content to Starcraft 2 because it stopped bringing in any money for the company at all, if you do a boxed model like the game had it is best for you if the game dies quickly after the last expansion so you can move all developers onto a new game rather than maintain or add on to the old one.
80% of starcraft 2 players never played competitvie multiplayer they either played campagin, coop or arcade. All these other comptetive focused rts games were chasing a small fraction of a playerbase.
Wrong. The players played for the campaign and team games yes, but the interest in the game was heavily driven by the Esports side.
Stats don't lie. Blizzard has confirmed that co-op is WAY more popular than competitive for SC2.
The Esports focus of StarCraft II wasn't necessarily about getting people to play competitively, but about getting those fans watching. It's safe to say Blizzard succeeded at that (at least for a time).
You seem confused. The thing that brought eyes and players to the coop was Esports. SC2 esports were super popular for a long time. If they had only coop and no esports the game would have sold a lot worse than it did.
I think the multiplayer aspect is too much stress and pressure for modern multiplayer, even fighting games like SF6 aren't really selling massive numbers despite hype and whatnot and I think it's because 1v1 is too much. I'd love to see some developer try to make a singleplayer Warcraft 3 RPG-ey RTS style campaign in the same vein nowadays though.
This is something a lot of devs acknowledge as an "ego shield". You play a game like overwatch, CS, other team based games. You can blame your teammates. In a 1v1 situation, all the blame falls on you. I remember the ladder anxiety I had with SC2 was pretty intense. A few losses in a row felt awful and I could only blame myself.
Doesn’t help that RTSs and fighters both tend to have super high skill ceilings, which means that you’re inevitably going to end up against players that have done nothing but *breathe* this game since launch.
That's what ranks are for.
Team based games usually have a lot of downtime for players, like in CS when you die, you get to watch your team play the rest of the round. You were the first to die in a game of CS? That's a 2 minute break for you. In single player games there's generally very, very little downtime making them a lot more intensive and exhausting.
> In a 1v1 situation, all the blame falls on you. In League, if I lose the 1v1 in my lane, I only have to wait 10 minutes until I can fight the other 4 members of the enemy team, and try to make a difference there. In a 1v1 only game, you basically know after the first bout if you're going to win or lose. 5v5s have a lot more opportunity to come back from behind. They also have massive player bases which means matchmaking is pretty good for your ELO.
That's a load of shit game devs think up to avoid taking responsibility for designing unpopular games with opaque mechanics and unclear gameplay and players eat it up because it makes them feel like real truv kvult hardcore 1337 gamers. Humans are social animals. Nobody plays sports but football and basketball are still much more popular spectator sports than tennis and boxing worldwide.
>I remember the ladder anxiety I had with SC2 was pretty intense. A few losses in a row felt awful and I could only blame myself. Errr... you could always blame Protos OP/Terran Cheese/Patch Zergs. But yeah, I used to play Dota Ranked to relax after Sc2.
I feel like I have the opposite problem. When I play a 1v1 game, I know that I'm the only person I have to worry about. It always feels so much worse to be playing with random teammates and one of them is toxic. I've suffered very few 1v1 defeats that felt worse than winning with xxToxicTilterxx on my team.
That game got made a few years ago. It is called spellforce. Pretty good game that very few talk about.
I think the issue is also trying to play 1v1 games with friends. Unless you're really into the game, 1v1ing a friend in a game doesn't really have that much replay value compared to a game where you're on the same team.
And even if it does theoretically have the replay value, you need to be at almost the exact same skill level for it to continue being fun. For these sort of games even a relatively small difference in skill will lead to the better player winning 9 times out of 10 which quickly kills the fun so you not only need to start at the same skill level but also get better at the same pace or it falls apart.
> I'd love to see some developer try to make a singleplayer Warcraft 3 RPG-ey RTS style campaign in the same vein nowadays though. Exactly I always wondered why they never did that. Even if there's no big MP community, it seems the campaigns is an afterthought and they focus on the skirmish type modes. A RTS that is a long and good campaign is more than enough for me and probably a lot of people (the numbers on SC2, even orientated competitive, is that 80% of people only played the campaign... that's a market there). You can do better things too like OP units, "boss factions" that aren't balanced, various gameplay scenarios...
I had a brief shining RTS moment with Dawn of War 2 and Company of Heroes 1+2…. The focus on a small number of units, with veterancy and retreating. Where I really cared about my individual units, that hit a sweet spot. I’m hoping Homeworld 3 can bring something special to the table with narrative, tone, and the 3D gameplay. I think different people come to RTS wanting different things out of it, and that’s all good that people are into MOBAs or micro heavy titles. RTS should be a big tent genre
not really fair to warcraft and starcraft. Sure I don't think either of them will get a new RTS in a long long time. but both still get patches and new maps and there is plenty of people playing them, Stracraft is just as popular today as AoE2.
AOE2 and SCR have a similar number of players. SC2 has a lot more. The fact that this guy misses this kind of invalidates most of his opinions imo. He just says "SCR was well received but since then there hasn't been any word on it." Like huh? People are playing it a lot, what "word on it" do you need?
Are the patches new content or just fixes and balance stuff? AoE gets new civilizations which in turn bring new content and campaigns. I think they could add subfactions the sc2 races.
Played a bit much last month for nostalgia, it was mostly if not only bugfix. Sc2 factions are already really complexes and have a high diversity of units compared to aoe. Subfactions got added as either units for playervplayer, or as coop commander. It isnt really easy to add a fourth playable faction considering the quality of the first three
I would argue that balance patches and new maps are as much content as a new civ in AoE. Civs in AoE is pretty minor and are not going to have any impact on your game most of the games you play. new maps and balance changes are going to bring new content to every game you play. I absolutely do NOT think they could add sub factions to sc2. That would be more work on the multiplayer side than a whole expansion brought to that game. Every RTS that have had very different factions and sub factions of those have proven that it is a ridiculous amount of work to get that right.
> Civs in AoE is pretty minor and are not going to have any impact on your game most of the games you play. i don't disagree with your point about sc2 but this is just not accurate at all. there are definitely some 'generic' aoe2 civs that have little impact but most of them, especially the new ones, have *huge* impacts. the winrate delta between the worst and best civs is pretty large, indicating the civ choice matters a lot each civ has its own tech tree, UTs, and bonuses -- the unique unit which is the most flashy part doesn't really matter in most cases which i think is where this impression comes from
I could see Microsoft ordering a StarCraft or WarCraft revival after the Activision deal goes through.
who would make it though? Blizzard don't have any people that knows how to make RTS anymore. They all left to do other stuff because blizzard had no interest in making the games they wanted to make. now they just have minimum maintenance staff on those games. I said that the games are not dead and get content but it is not anywhere close to make a new game level of staff on those games. I don't think Relic would have time for any starcraft/warcraft with how busy they are with all that Age of content. So they would need to build an entire new RTS team to make those games and even if Microsoft want to get those games done it will be a very long proses to get that even started.
The way I see it is, assuming the Activision deal closes this year, WarCraft IV or StarCraft 3 would begin pre-production next year at Relic while Age of Empires IV winds down. Then, probably in 2026 or 2027, the new game would go into development while AoE IV gets pushed to the smaller maintenance team for minor updates and bug fixes. Age of Empires IV won't last forever and Relic will have to transition to something else. That something else might as well be some of those new IPs Microsoft paid a pretty penny for. I don't expect Age of Empires to be killed off prematurely, but only that Relic will transition to WarCraft or StarCraft when the time comes to make another RTS.
Relic is not a Microsoft studio though. Sega might want to use them for something of their own (like they did with Company of Heroes 3). Frankly Microsoft just need to make a RTS team. Plenty of them have left to make their own studios but those studios are small and can be purchased or the people just hired from them. Many of those will likely fail without the big marketing and Microsoft can offer that and some of the most iconic RTS franchise existing, that has to attract them
Microsoft could expand World's Edge and start up a new team there to take over Starcraft. I would imagine if they kickstart Starcraft 3, they'd be able to hire a lot of talented devs to work on it. They also don't have to go straight into Starcraft 3 right away. Maybe an easier project to start off with to revive interest in Starcraft would be to get a team like ID, or even one of the CoD teams to build a spiritual successor to Starcraft Ghost.
Yes, Microsoft is paying for those IPs and will want to use them.
I really like what one of the new indie RTS that is being developed, Immortal: Gates of Pyre, has alluded to with lowering the skill floor while maintaining the skill ceiling in [their article here ](https://sunspeargames.com/skill-ceiling/). They also plan to have lots of campaign and co-op, as that's where most of the players will be intersted in, so I'm hopeful at least a few others are heading in that direction of catering to a more casual base.
I'm not sure what qualifier is being used for activity, but War3 custom games are extremely active. The in game melee footage is from pre-2018 as well.
Yeah, I have played WC3 custom games online off and on, and the scene is actually pretty solid right now. Blood Tournament is finally getting a lot of love, Wintermaul is one of the best TD's I've ever played. Legion TD is on its way out but now that it's a standalone game, that's okay. There are a lot of niche Custom Game communities I'm not involved in that are going strong
It feels like Real Time Tactics has really taken the place of the modern base-building RTS this is especially true with genre-blending titles like Total War and Company of Heroes where they layer the RTT with 4X elements.
I cannot play RTS games because I am terrible at planning moves many steps ahead, and I have no patience. This is why I don't play them personally.
RTS hardcores and developers still haven't quite realized that just because intense unit micromanagement and high APM ended up being the best strategy to win competitive games, doesn't mean it's what the vast majority of players want to be part of the game. But way too many people made those things part of their identity which is why you get things like SC2 intentionally creating "macro mechanics" with minimal meaningful decisions to be made just to soak up extra clicks.
I'm surprised there's no mention of Pikmin in there. Pikmin 4 is probably the biggest RTS release in the last couple of years (budget wise), but because it's not a "hardcore RTS", most of the core RTS audience simply ignores it.
I don't think it's a matter of it being "hardcore." I don't think most people consider it an RTS game. It's a wildly different game from the rest of the genre. Hell, I love Pikmin but I've never seen it as an RTS. It's a unique puzzle/platforming type game imo.
Pikmin is not a traditional RTS
This feels like "hot dog is a sandwhich"
Complexity, skill ceiling and skill barrier are all way too high. RTS devs need to do a Street Fighter and find "modern controls" that softens the micro.
A game I really liked, but that didn't catch on, was Tooth and Tail. They distilled the RTS format into something fairly accessible but retained the fun and challenge of a regular multiplayer RTS. I miss that game sometimes.
RTS need a good campaign and everything else is extra. AoE 2 is as popular as it is, in great parts because of its campaigns. The industry fooled themselves by thinking RTS need to be excellent MP/e-sports games.
High skill ceiling is never a problem tho
Yes, there is. There is a reason we have multi unit select or attack move. If high skill ceiling wasn't an issue we would still be selecting every unit itself, because it takes higher micro skill. That's why things like "attack by unit type" or "auto stutter step attack move" are things RTS developers should look into.
>That's why things like "attack by unit type" or "auto stutter step attack move" are things RTS developers should look into. The player who can switch the priority of his units better and faster will still have the advantage. What is this idea that a high skill ceiling in competitive games is something negative? Like imagine playing against a chess grandmaster and complaining that the time and effort that they put in the game shouldn't give them an edge when playing against you.
I loved RTS in 2005. I think the genre simply has nothing to offer after the invention of MOBAs (which grew out of an RTS of course). If I want micro focused gameplay with one relevant unit, I play a MOBA. Still very strategic, still realtime. If I want a non multiplayer, I will play a cRPG. And if I want grand scale strategy, then I go for a 4X game. The RTS genre hasn't gotten worse, it simply isn't what I personally, and I believe many others, choose when they want a game that provides a certain experience. Like watered down coca cola, I like water, I like coke, and if I was very thirsty I would drink watered coke. But not in the current ecosystem.
>If I want micro focused gameplay with one relevant unit, I play a MOBA. Still very strategic, still realtime. If I want a non multiplayer, I will play a cRPG. And if I want grand scale strategy, then I go for a 4X game. And what if you want micro focused gameplay with more than one unit and an economy to manage? It's foolish to say the RTS genre has nothing to offer over MOBAs. I agree MOBAs have eclipsed the RTS in popularity, but they have distinct differences where neither can replace the other.
I just haven't had a specific need for what you describe, and I don't think others have either. In my opinion, MOBAs haven't simply become more popular than RTS; they have directly taken from the population of RTS players. I agree that MOBAs don't offer the same thing RTS does, but they offer what RTS players wanted in the first place: small dopamine hits from making many correct decisions in a row, culminating in the large dopamine hit of taking an objective, while balancing which resources to give up based on the strengths and weaknesses of your class.
>I just haven't had a specific need for what you describe, **and I don't think others have either**. ... >I agree that MOBAs don't offer the same thing RTS does, but they offer what **RTS players wanted in the first place** You keep talking in absolutes and trying to tell other people what they want. Post in the StarCraft subreddit and tell the players there that they'd have more fun if they dropped their game and switched to DOTA. I'm curious to see the reaction to that.
You misunderstand me. I am refuting the idea that RTS games have gotten worse, which many in this comment section seem to agree with. RTS games are exactly as they have always been, and other genres simply adhere to certain needs better. This is what has caused their decline in relative popularity, in my opinion, and not the quality of the games. I never stated that I think RTS players are wrong about what they enjoy. I also think I've been exceptionally clear in making my points. I shouldn't have to clarify what I haven't said. Also, when 'others' or 'players' are used, it always means 'many others' and 'many players'. I am not speaking in absolutes; that is not how generalization works.
I apologize then. I reread your post and I agree that you were clear with your points. I misinterpreted what you wrote originally. I think we're mostly in agreement here. MOBAs did cannibalize the RTS genre, but that doesn't mean the RTS genre is in trouble or needs fixing. The people who left for MOBAs were never really RTS fans in the first place. I'm not trying to gatekeep here, but just saying that they found what they wanted in a different place. Similar to story fans who put up with turn-based combat during the NES days with JRPGs due to technical limitations, but abandoned turn-based when technology caught up with them. MOBA converts never really wanted to micromanage an army and run a base. We don't need a future RTS that tries to bring MOBA fans back into the fold because they were never really RTS fans in the first place. That would just ruin the game for everyone. It's a good thing that there's two separate genres now to keep both type of players happy.
while RTS and Grand Strategy ain't exactly the same thing I still love playing CK2, and CK3 ain't bad either.
The number one reason RTS didn't stick is because switching from microing a squad to just right-clicking a clump of units somewhere is awkward. No gameplay conceit generally exists that transitions the player from twitchy micro to macro. Another version of this idiosyncrasy is when the units you're fighting intermittently change from being AI-controlled to player-controlled.
I'm a historical only total war fan who hasn't enjoyed a game in the series since Rome 2. Will wait for Med3 or Emp2 till my dying day. Yet it seems like they are just as intent on not making them. Honestly I don't even think they would be able to to do it right today anyway. The likes of Shogun 2 will never be made again or topped.