Thread 719225224

Why did RTS die as a genre?

Because MOBAs. That's literally it.

I really like RTS but damn is it hard to play.
AoE IV I think is the best RTS. Too bad I'm only a one trick with HRE all-in macemen
I prefer Dota 2. It is much more complex, but far easier to pilot. Or maybe it is because I have so many hours in it comparatively.

>>719225224 (OP)
Devs started focusing on competitive multiplayer in pursuit of becoming the next big esport while MOBAs poached the chunk of the playerbase that actually cared about competitive multiplayer.
Also the amount of time and money that's required to make a good single player RTS compared to the size of the playerbase makes it a poor investment for large companies. Blizzard made more money on a single WoW mount than the entirety of SC2.

>>719225224 (OP)
It didn't.

>>719225567
>devs kill 32 player lobbies because of competifags and muh metrics muh faster games
Nah nigga what the fucks wrong with you?

>>719225742
2 22 player lobbies or 1 32 player lobby while 12 people are on a waiting list.

>>719225567
>the better TA clone

>>719225548
It's this. Every successful RTS ever made had either a solid campaign & worldbuilding or at least a good Risk mode.
Devs started making slop that was just multiplayer and skirmish with lazy shallow shitty worldbuilding and then wonder why their games flopped.

Multiplayer players, even counting comp stomps and such, have always been a SMALL fraction of the customer base, when you try to cater to them directly you're basically throwing away the vast majority of the revenue you could have had.

>>719225224 (OP)
RTS is still alive and probably has more people playing it now than in the 2000's. It's just that RTS makes up a smaller percent of games because gaming got flooded with plebs who only play goyslop.

It did? I play them whenever I can.
>but the new ones
Too much on the backlog already. Re-playing old favourites isn't helping but I'd rather play what I want.
>b-but the industry
Should crash and burn. Not in the least because the new ones are full of EA, DLC, always online and all manner of other cancer.

>>719225871
I fucking love this game like you wouldn't believe.

>>719225809
Literally not a problem as mayority of the playerbase are willing to sit and watch the biglobpot, also
>1 22 player lobby with 15+ specs and 1 8-12 player lobby AND 1 4-8 elo +2200 palladium lobby
Its been over a month and nothing's changed except players now get kicked out of games just for playing 1 or 2 matches because of the restrictive lobby size and because everyone's used and expects big lobpot.

>>719225224 (OP)
They had shit campaigns generally and normal niggers prefer mobas to rts.

>>719225224 (OP)
controlling multiple units is too hard
also this >>719225349

>0. It's not really dead: plenty of people continue playing RTS (narrowly defined) to this day
>1. As to why the genre has become a lot less prolific compared to its golden age in the 90s and early 00s, it's mostly because few people actually played them for the overall RTS experience. They weren't wrong to do so at the time, but since then more specific genres have emerged or gained prominence. Some people liked building tidy defensible bases (city-builders, tower defense), others liked microing powerful hero units (ASSFAGs), others liked LARPing a general (Total War), others a sovereign (Crusader Kings), still more realized they preferred turn-based or RTwP formats that had at that time fallen under RTS shadow, and of course most players of the bestselling RTS actually didn't play the RTS part but were in it for custom games, which are now standalone
>2. On the other hand the genre has stagnated. Genre purists have a narrow idea about what they want (*craft/AoE style RTS) but the golden age managed to produce really fucking good games, so the bar is set incredibly high
>3. Suits also don't know what people want. They chase e.g. e-sports fame, when every popular e-sport has grown organically, and competitive balance in fact tends to make the game sterile and dull. Even multiplayer focus tends to be misguided: people generally don't set out to play MP from the onset, but because they like the campaign and the underlying game and want more. And most of everything's just shit. I liked what I heard about e.g. Stormgate's priorities before the release, but design priorities don't make a good game and it's just shit. There are new RTS games being released, but not in the kind of numbers where you would necessarily even expect a hit.

>>719225224 (OP)
its a boring genre that got nowhere to grow to

>>719225224 (OP)
it's not dead. it had it's time in the sun and then became less popular due to new genres coming out, different types of people joining le gaming scene, and developers just not making RTS as good as whats already out.

RTS is very much alive thoughever.

Not approachable enough for the majority of people.

>>719225224 (OP)
the smarter players went to 4x and the faster players went to mobas and arpgs.

>>719225871
Zero-K improved upon TA and made it into something better. The units are far better and very fun compared to BAR. The pacing is much better and you don't have to wait constructing your first factory. Much more flexible gameplay style. Strategic situations can be more persistent and need to be solved that can't just simply be out-ecod out of existance. You don't need to watch a tutorial or read the wiki to play the game.

>>719225224 (OP)
what do you mean i'm playing dawn of war

literal bot thread
and /v/ still falls for it

>>719226758
>the faster players went to play slow games
lmao what?

>>719227126
Personally I just want to talk about RTS. If it requires baiting retards first, so be it.

>>719225224 (OP)
the issue with RTS is that it's nearly impossible to balance for:
Casual players (AKA the vast majority of RTS players for the last 15) years) don't want to be some starcraft e-sport kid doing 10,000 kpm macro, they just want to control a lot of units from a top-down perspective and build a base, they just want the game to be fun more than anything

competitive players WILL DEMAND that the game cater to them and have infinite complexity, a million hotkeys for every single feature, and will call the game trash if it doesn't cater to them. They want the game to be challenging and deep more than anything.

These 2 views DO NOT MESH, you can't have a simple RTS for casuals that also has infinite depth for the pro's, it just doesn't work, so what ends up happening is every new RTS sells pitiful numbers because only one half (at best) of the already small RTS market is buying it, which means companies know that by making a new RTS game in 2025 they are setting themselves up for failure, so why even make an RTS unless it's a passion project that you know you will lose money on? That is why RTS is dying, because no publisher wants to shoot themselves in the foot like this trying to make one that will likely never turn a profit or at least break even.

Obsession of game devs to be in control of the meta has burned the fun out of the genre, and no big dev would dare to match production values of Starcraft 2. Also huge disparity of interest in the audience.

>>719227801
>the issue with RTS is that it's nearly impossible to balance for:
Nah, it's easy. Bordering on trivial. Not going to help this rotten industry survive another day so it can keep guessing.
>They want the game to be challenging and deep more than anything.
Is that why they'll rote-memorise a few """meta""" build orders and execute them robotically? Better play an actual sport that improves your health and overall fitness.
>because only one half (at best) of the already small RTS market is buying it
Your math doesn't work. Whichever side is larger would've been catered to successfully if you were right. If it was an even split (it isn't) both would've been somewhat viable.
>no publisher wants to shoot themselves in the foot
Truth with deceptive exaggeration: publisher wants line go up forever higher than competition so they prioritise pretty much anything else.
Still not the reason why smaller devs can't make it big, some of those were addressed above.

>>719227801
>competitive players
>infinite complexity
lmao

>>719227801
Of-course they mesh.

>>719225224 (OP)
Same reason arena shooters died. Ridiculously high skill ceiling discouraging 99% of players from multiplayer + gotta make the games accessible to consoleniggers.

What's the point of these threads?
It won't bring rts back.
It doesn't make you good at rts.
No discusskon of one of the newer RTS or one of the classics
/v/ is not your shitty echo chamber.

>>719225224 (OP)
entry skill ceiling was too high

>>719225349
cant believe people are still saying this shit in 2025. How stupid are you?

>>719230458
People on /v/ always, and I mean ALWAYS say moba is trash, but never explain why
>t. Never played one

>>719225224 (OP)
Because you played starcraft instead of forged alliance.

>>719230554
>People on /v/ always, and I mean ALWAYS say moba is trash, but never explain why
They aren't.

Because Blizzard stopped making them and MOBAs

>>719226006
All the popular titles are like over a decade old. Not discounting the games, they're just so good they have staying power but there's no new hit coming out.

>>719225224 (OP)
Devs thought they were meant to be pandering to multiplayer and made campaign an afterthought
DOW4 devs are saying they are going to have their focus be primarily on the campaign though

>>719225224 (OP)
It got perfected. When you've got near-perfect games like Total Annihilation, Warcraft 3 or Rise of Nations, the only place to go is down.

Is there an RTS that's not part of the big ones that have an engaging solo campaign?

>>719229887
Wrong. Put some actual thought into it. Start with how "twitch shooters" were played, in MP.

grand strategy > rts

>>719230264
it's literally bots anon, most threads on /v/ is either bots farming content or pajeet shills, it's very easy to spot

>>719234368
Depends on how much jank you can handle, but this >>719234235
There's an open source version called UA_Source
From newer ones I'd recommend Covert Revolt (also free) but it's incredibly difficult if you want to complete all endings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Onofd_4rf74

The same reason fighting games are dead, it's a stagnant pond genre where people who have been playing for 10+ years will hopelessly eviscerate you for joining the genre and the grind to become competent is an unreasonably large time expenditure for a niche or nonexistent reward.

RTS games died out because RTS games do not work on consoles (they tried), and during the 7th console generation PC game development was completely gutted by the major publishers in order to focus on console-first, (maybe) port later development cycle.
MOBA rose to mainstream prominence around 2010 with the easily accesable LoL, which probably ate more in to MMO and FPS player numbers than RTS, mainly because by 2010 the genre was barren, with Relic and Blizzard arguably the only main devs in the field, and we all know how things ended for those two.
It is likely that some RTS projects got shafted as publishers scrambled to get their own DoTA-clones out the door, but that is a secondary factor.

A more important factor is that most people realized they don't want to play an RTS game, but rather they want to play a city builder OR a battle commanding OR a logistics management game, so they dispersed to games like Anno, Total War and Wargame, Men of War, Europa Universalis, even Factorio and similar.

Finally, the genre is setting sensitive. You have people who refuse to play medieval fantasy settings or only play modern warfare.

A fragmented genre with low mass apeal that doesn't work on consoles that most people who say they like don't actually like is hard sell.

tl;dr D.O.R.F. will save us RTSbros

>>719225224 (OP)
Competitive RTS has niche appeal, and people prefer their single-player strategy games to be turn based

if only Eugen actually made good games and marketed them, i feel they would do really well. just nonstop action with fun units.

>>719225224 (OP)
The flood of normies who got into vidya in the late 00s all played on consoles, so publishers didn't want to bother with games that really only work with mouse and keyboard.

>>719225224 (OP)
The esports craze killed the genre. Devs didn't care about the campaign or custom maps anymore.

>>719225349
it's spelled A S S F A G G O T S