What has happened to the RTS genre?

[BaronUberstein]

Personally I love Company of Heroes far more than games like Starcraft or Age of Empires II. Empire Earth II was fun for awhile but then my friends stopped playing and I couldn't do nation-RP with it anymore. It's no fun to just fight instantly and not do politics and land negotiations, at least not in a game with provinces, roads, and an a mini-map that you can put markers on and share w/ other players.

As for why I love CoH more than those 'classics', I'll list them here:
1. Cover, troops can actually take cover and such
2. Customizable squad equipment
3. Infantry w/ rifles arn't going to be hurting a tank anytime soon. You can't just spam infantry and expect them to kill a Tiger (unless you spam AT infantry )

Don't get me wrong, I loved Age of Empire II and Red Alert 2 back when I played them, but they've been replaced by what I feel is a better, more comprehensive game.

 

[ecoho]

People don't have the patience or intelligence for complexity anymore. Everything is meant to be played faster. Just look at how dumbed down Starcraft 2 is compared to Starcraft: Brood War. All the changes to the game are made to have it be more accessible and also play MUCH faster. Games shouldn't be more than 15 minutes.
They are Real Time ACTION games. Not strategy.

you sir have never played team matches if one is less then 40mins someone screwed up.

OT: i dont know what happened to them but i love the old ones i have i have the first decade of C&C and rise of nations both are great and lets not forget starcraft 2

 

[Worgen]

In short, consoles happened, you cant make rts games for consoles, it just doesn't really work so publishers decided to just make more fps games.

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

People don't have the patience or intelligence for complexity anymore. Everything is meant to be played faster. Just look at how dumbed down Starcraft 2 is compared to Starcraft: Brood War. All the changes to the game are made to have it be more accessible and also play MUCH faster. Games shouldn't be more than 15 minutes.
They are Real Time ACTION games. Not strategy.

you sir have never played team matches if one is less then 40mins someone screwed up.

OT: i dont know what happened to them but i love the old ones i have i have the first decade of C&C and rise of nations both are great and lets not forget starcraft 2

I was mostly referring to 1v1s as it is the only type of gameplay that is generally "taken seriously". Whereas team games are just kind of crazy silly, same with FFAs. I have played a ton of team games in SC2 also. I found that they tended to last a bit longer but were still hugely predictable. The core mechanics of SC2 just don't appeal to me, way too much emphasis on macro and not enough on micro.
-EDIT-
I am aware this makes me a dated dinosaur for preferring BW. Of course, since I play neither anymore, its a moot point!

 

[Riddle78]

EA bought it and murdered it beyond recognition. Thankfully,a friend of mine in college plans on returning the genre to it's former glory...In about 5-10 years.

 

[Turtleboy1017]

People don't have the patience or intelligence for complexity anymore. Everything is meant to be played faster. Just look at how dumbed down Starcraft 2 is compared to Starcraft: Brood War. All the changes to the game are made to have it be more accessible and also play MUCH faster. Games shouldn't be more than 15 minutes.
They are Real Time ACTION games. Not strategy.

"Dumbed down" I'll be honest, it really irks me when people say something like this. Blizzard didn't dumb down anything in Starcraft 2, they made it smarter. "It" being the A.I. Pathing doesn't have downs syndrome anymore, control groups are finally more than 8, and smart fire means the siege tanks actually do something now.

It's funny that you say "Real Time Action", since BW was much more "actiony" than Starcraft 2. You could have garbage tactics in BW, but if you had better micro than your opponent, you could win. Starcraft 2 broadens the importance of tactics, but still keeps micro useful. All it did was reduce the amount of pointless skills required to be good at the game EG. Worker micro, Siege tank targeting, Control group size.

More on topic, Starcraft 2 is an excellent RTS game. Regardless of what anyone will say, it being "easy" or "dumbed down" or "too accessible" or whatever, it's still one of the best examples of "easy to learn, hard to master" out there. But of course that's just my opinion. I started this game garbage tier silver, and worked my way up to rank 3 plat. Nothing beats the feeling of looking back and knowing you improved. Also I've been playing this game for a good 3 months consistently, much longer than any other game has held my attention.

 

[skywolfblue]

People don't have the patience or intelligence for complexity anymore. Everything is meant to be played faster. Just look at how dumbed down Starcraft 2 is compared to Starcraft: Brood War. All the changes to the game are made to have it be more accessible and also play MUCH faster. Games shouldn't be more than 15 minutes.
They are Real Time ACTION games. Not strategy.

"Dumbed down" I'll be honest, it really irks me when people say something like this. Blizzard didn't dumb down anything in Starcraft 2, they made it smarter. "It" being the A.I. Pathing doesn't have downs syndrome anymore, control groups are finally more than 8, and smart fire means the siege tanks actually do something now.

It's funny that you say "Real Time Action", since BW was much more "actiony" than Starcraft 2. You could have garbage tactics in BW, but if you had better micro than your opponent, you could win. Starcraft 2 broadens the importance of tactics, but still keeps micro useful. All it did was reduce the amount of pointless skills required to be good at the game EG. Worker micro, Siege tank targeting, Control group size.

More on topic, Starcraft 2 is an excellent RTS game. Regardless of what anyone will say, it being "easy" or "dumbed down" or "too accessible" or whatever, it's still one of the best examples of "easy to learn, hard to master" out there. But of course that's just my opinion. I started this game garbage tier silver, and worked my way up to rank 3 plat. Nothing beats the feeling of looking back and knowing you improved. Also I've been playing this game for a good 3 months consistently, much longer than any other game has held my attention.

I have to chime in and second this. I can understand and respect people may have felt that micro was more their flavor then strategy, but personally I'm extremely happy with the way that SC2 focuses more on how clever you are then how many buttons you can mash.

 

[Legendsmith]

And don't forget SCII which is a genuine RTS gem

It's a glorified Starcraft expansion. It's good because starcraft is good.
It's NOT a gem. It does nothing new. I'm not saying it's bad, you'd be stupid to think I was. it's a solid RTS game but it has no innovation. Oh, and the story isn't on par with the original's either. That isn't to say that the campaign is bad. It's not; the campaign's gameplay is fine, but the story that the campaign tells is not good.

DoWII: Retribution was a masterpiece. Sure, it had a single campaign but you could choose to play it as Space Marines, Chaos Marines, Eldar, Imperial Guard, Orks or Tyranids. Each had their own characters, units, gear and motivations for hunting down Kyras but I never actually got bored of playing the same missions with completely different races.

Yes, every campaign is almost exactly the same. Oh and don't forget they didn't make a single new map for it; The entire campaign uses maps from chaos rising.
The multiplayer, where a game's balance shows itself is also horribly broken. If you're not Chaos they you're NOT going to win. At all.
Lastly, Memory leaks. Not as bad as the original DOWII, but they are there.

And I never found Supreme Commander to be any good either.

Depends; SupCom Vanilla or Supcom Forged Alliance. Each has its own, different, problems.
They are good RTS games though, even from a solely mechanical perspective. I mainly love them for the scale and that sexy, sexy user interface. No other RTS game has an interface that good.


The highlight of recent RTS games for me has been R.U.S.E even though you can smell the console on it it's a new, solid RTS game with a nice twist. Unfortunately the PC version's community was brutally murdered by Valve Anti-Cheat.

Really though, I think the problem is twofold:
FPS is dominant at the moment. It creates a positive feedback loop. Devs make FPS games, these games sell, people like them, data is collected, better FPS games are made, FPS development kits are created to make it easier for other developers to make FPS games, so more FPS games are made, more data is collected, FPS games are shown to be profitable, so on, so forth. There are less devs making other games.

Second part is publishers and developers wanting games to "appeal to a wider audience." What this ends up doing is dumbing down games so the RTS fans don't want to play it, but it's still too much for the casual market. The end result is that the game doesn't have much appeal to any intended core audience. Even though I like the game, I will admit RUSE has a foot in this trap-filled field.

 

[Johnson McGee]

One of my favourites is Sins of a Solar Empire.

I think that Sins is mis-labelled as a 4X, it is really more of a space RTS.

 

[Jandau]

Consoles happened. RTS games don't work on consoles, at least not very well. Also, they are less appealing to the mainstream audience. Getting your average shooter fan to play Skyrim is less of a leap than getting him to play Starcraft 2. It also doesn't help that the few RTS games that did go to the consoles were kinda crap (I'm looking at you, Supreme Commander 2)...

Basically, it's a genre pretty much limited to the PC in an age when the PC is reviled by a good chunk of the industry. As a result, aside from Starcraft 2 and the current Total War, it's hard to find real true RTS games anymore.

 

[Muspelheim]

This sort of thing is likely my fault, since I never was very fond of base-building. That doesn't mean that I just want ze omg-action!11 right away, but I never felt it very interesting to have to build little houses for all my soldiers to inexplicably appear out of.

I really liked the attempts of mixing up the usual strategy-routine in both World in Conflict and in Dawn of War 2. In DoW 2, for example, I actually felt like a space marine commander, mainly because I couldn't just call in how many I liked of the legendary, exceptionally few augmented supermen, but had to do with what I got.

And then, I found out about Men of War... I think I've found my happyzone of RTS-games for the rest of times.

 

[JaceArveduin]

It also doesn't help that the few RTS games that did go to the consoles were kinda crap (I'm looking at you, Supreme Commander 2)...

You forgot that BFME2 was on the 360. I'm not sure whether the 360 version was good or not, though I highly doubt it.

But yeah, BFME2 was my first computer game, and I still play it's expansion with my mates on occasions. It had fairly horrid balance and all kinds of other quirks, but I still love the game to death and consider it my favorite RTS. I've played WC3 and C&C3, they just didn't feel as good. I guess it's cause you can hit such massive battles, and finally being able to summon a Balrog just makes the win feel complete.

 

[Raso719]

The industry assumes that most gamers are morons and so they craft shallow experiences that appeal to a wide array of people of varying demographics (many of which normally wouldn't have interest in the genre in question under most cases) so they constantly strive to make games simpler, flashier and more whore themselves out to popular opinion rather than trying anything new or original. Thus the RTS genre has been stripped of it's complexity, level of control and options in order to make them easy to jump into and allow basic mastery of the game to be achieved in under a few months by even a moron.

Even if the strategy in many RTS games are dead at lease the games still occur in real time... I guess.

Sadly, this analysis could be said of many genres these days ESPECIALLY the more popular genres that are often made into AAA titles by huge western companies. Accessibility is key and since most gamers are (allegedly) morons if you make it too complex you'll only wind up selling a bit over a million and a half copies to your dedicated fan base and target demographics rather than 10 million copies to everyone and their mothers.

And this is why I'm all about the indie scene and Japanese games because they're not afraid to pander.

 

[Lyri]

Really, I'm disappointed at the state of RTS today.

Once upon a time games such as Age of Empires, Rise of Nations, Warcraft, and Command & Conquer under Westwood, were staples of RTS. They had a great feel to them. Quite a few had decent campaigns balanced with multiplayer. They had some depth, a wide variety of units, but were also reasonably accessible to newcomers. It seems as if RTS has become a much more competitive, elitist affair, everything is neurotically balanced out, a lot of online RTS communities are very hostile to newcomers or less competent players, more so than others - though nothing has changed there, but elitism seems to be built into game mechanisms this time. Some former RTS series have turned into real-time tactics. Tiberian Twilight, how is that even C&C anymore without base-building? Or Dawn of War II, that was a massively disappointing change.

World in Conflict was ok, but I enjoyed Command & Conquer Generals far more whilst my copy was still functional.

I used to play Dawn of War in a clan, that game was seriously hella fun. Soulstorm...Soulstorm killed it hard.

I think the main problem here is that more consoles becoming more popular, developers and publishers are looking to find games that cross over well.
It's a lot easier for console players to pick up another FPS or another RPG because of the sense of familiarity with other titles in the market today.

I'd like to see more RTS games coming out, I'm just not sure we will at least not for a long time. I still have Starcraft 2 though, so that's a bonus.

 

[nbamaniac]

Personally I love Company of Heroes far more than games like Starcraft or Age of Empires II. Empire Earth II was fun for awhile but then my friends stopped playing and I couldn't do nation-RP with it anymore. It's no fun to just fight instantly and not do politics and land negotiations, at least not in a game with provinces, roads, and an a mini-map that you can put markers on and share w/ other players.

As for why I love CoH more than those 'classics', I'll list them here:
1. Cover, troops can actually take cover and such
2. Customizable squad equipment
3. Infantry w/ rifles arn't going to be hurting a tank anytime soon. You can't just spam infantry and expect them to kill a Tiger (unless you spam AT infantry )

Don't get me wrong, I loved Age of Empire II and Red Alert 2 back when I played them, but they've been replaced by what I feel is a better, more comprehensive game.

Sir, I will grant you your greatest wish just for glorifying and ninjaing my point on CoH! *bow*

Bolded point 3 because this is what plagued the RTS industry the most.. Good thing CoH fixed this.

 

[squeekenator]

and smart fire means the siege tanks actually do something now.

Funny that you should pick that specific example, since siege tanks were way better in BW on account of being cheaper, having noticably higher damage, costing less supply, being better supported by the rest of the Terran race and having far fewer and weaker counters. If only mech in SC2 were as good as the original, I might actually play Terran...

 

[Conza]

Really, I'm disappointed at the state of RTS today.

Once upon a time games such as Age of Empires, Rise of Nations, Warcraft, and Command & Conquer under Westwood, were staples of RTS. They had a great feel to them. Quite a few had decent campaigns balanced with multiplayer. They had some depth, a wide variety of units, but were also reasonably accessible to newcomers. It seems as if RTS has become a much more competitive, elitist affair, everything is neurotically balanced out, a lot of online RTS communities are very hostile to newcomers or less competent players, more so than others - though nothing has changed there, but elitism seems to be built into game mechanisms this time. Some former RTS series have turned into real-time tactics. Tiberian Twilight, how is that even C&C anymore without base-building? Or Dawn of War II, that was a massively disappointing change.

World in Conflict was ok, but I enjoyed Command & Conquer Generals far more whilst my copy was still functional.

Ok you want RTS? Rome Total War (old), Medieval Total War 2 (oldish), Empire Total War and Napoleon Total War (new), Shogun Total War (brand new), otherwise there's SC2. Yep, that's about it, get ust to it.

 

[RedDeadFred]

I just think that there is a lack of innovation in them. I mean there really isn't much new besides units and buildings. That's the main difference. SCII is fun and all but did it really do anything new?
Maybe people are just getting bored of them and developers are running out of ideas.
And no I don't get how COD doesn't innovate either but still gets amazing sales.

 

[YuheJi]

I will continue to bash Company of Heroes over everyone's head! Easily my favorite RTS out there. It was a very happy medium between base building, tactics, and squad management. And the things you could do just felt so good. Running over barbed wire with tanks, plowing forest to attack at angle enemies wouldn't expect, tossing grenades to destroy fences, taking out enemy officers with snipers... so good!