Why is RTS so heartless?

[shadow_Fox81]

I guess some commanders are bad and some are good.

but the birds eye angle most rts titles favor does feel abstracting and in general battles in rts feel quite frenetic and generic so there is little characterization in troops or environments which are both generally quite static.

personally i feel rts would greatly benefit from a dose of rpg; shogun two is my favorite thus far in that direction simply because of the way it encouraged the player to feel deeply for every decision they made on and off the battle field (in the campaign).

 

[Evilpigeon]

Why would you want to empathize with the soldiers in a strategy game? It'd get in the way of the... strategy.

Strategy at its highest and purest level is by driven by dispassion and logical thinking. Empathizing with each soldier and mourning every loss would only obstruct your ability to win a battle (or the entire war) by preventing you from being able to make the sacrifices that would allow your side to secure an expedient victory.

It obstructs nothing, simply adds meaning to your decisions and kinda gives you a secondary optional objective above and beyond simply winning, why use people as units in a strategy game if that has no consequence on the gameplay? You might as well just be playing with chess pieces.

 

[dobahci]

(Edit: deleted because what I originally posted didn't have much of a point to it. Didn't know how to get rid of the post completely though)

 

[lubchoh]

I think starcraft killed RTS. It like the only RTS game worth mentioning nowadays. Not speaking about strategies in general of course (I love Civ5 yeah) only real-time ones.

 

[artanis_neravar]

I think starcraft killed RTS. It like the only RTS game worth mentioning nowadays. Not speaking about strategies in general of course (I love Civ5 yeah) only real-time ones.

Starcraft came out in 1998,2010 Command and Conquer came out with games in 95,96 99,00,07,08, warcraft came out in 94,95,96,02,03 all of which are RTS games worth mentioning and those are just the ones from two companies. Starcraft didn't kill RTS' Starcraft didn't even do anything new, it just had an exceptional story, but so did Warcraft and C&C.