Yes, there is improvement in the RTS genre besides graphics. The controls got more comfortable. Warcraft 3 introduced a small RPG touch with the heroes, who, after that, appear now in almost every RTS. DoW uses control points for resource income instead of harvesting some resource in your home base. Still, I think that's not too much of innovation or improvement in a genre, when you consider that Dune 2 was released 1993, 15 years ago. But overall, yes, RTS games have become a lot better. Although, the AI still seems to face similar issues: Pathfinding still is a major problem in most of the games, the AI often resorts to "cheating" to be competitive enough and so on. I don't see huge improvements in the AI section.
FPS are even worse when it comes to innovation and improvements aside from presentation: Many shooters still come with an AI that is quite reminiscent of Doom, and every FPS receives praise if the AI is capable of sitting behind cover, which shows how "far" we've come AI-wise. The only real innovation in FPS games probably came with Half-Life's "interactive" cutscenes. Oh, and full body awareness, too, was introduced at some point. Other than that, there's not much new in the genre.
Of course, that just is true for innovations to the basic genre: There have been some games that have brought something new to the table every year, but they are spread very thin. Still, in my opinion it's true that especially RPGs and FPS-RPGs have become simplified with every generation. Nowadays you find the most complex character systems in hack'n slay games like Titan Quest and the likes, a genre that was looked down upon for its simplicity by role-players when Diablo was released. I'm not saying that Titan Quest or similar games have an especially complex character system, but when I look at current "full-blown" RPGs and their character systems and compare those to Titan Quest, TQ wins, which is a shame.
FPS are even worse when it comes to innovation and improvements aside from presentation: Many shooters still come with an AI that is quite reminiscent of Doom, and every FPS receives praise if the AI is capable of sitting behind cover, which shows how "far" we've come AI-wise. The only real innovation in FPS games probably came with Half-Life's "interactive" cutscenes. Oh, and full body awareness, too, was introduced at some point. Other than that, there's not much new in the genre.
Of course, that just is true for innovations to the basic genre: There have been some games that have brought something new to the table every year, but they are spread very thin. Still, in my opinion it's true that especially RPGs and FPS-RPGs have become simplified with every generation. Nowadays you find the most complex character systems in hack'n slay games like Titan Quest and the likes, a genre that was looked down upon for its simplicity by role-players when Diablo was released. I'm not saying that Titan Quest or similar games have an especially complex character system, but when I look at current "full-blown" RPGs and their character systems and compare those to Titan Quest, TQ wins, which is a shame.