Hello,

I am usualy just a reader but this topic made me create an account and make a reply...

If any of you guyz know or recall RTS called Dark Reign (1997) ... thats my first and till today last choice for best RTS game.

let me see...

1. Game worked 4vs4 on 54k modem!!! (just today i had 2 sync errors on COH2!?)

2. you could distribute your resources with teammates as needed.

3. same goes for giving your units to teamate if needed.

4. your units could be set on several AI behaviours and you can forget on them for a long time (mine favorite was planes on harras) .

5. Pathfinding was flawless

6. building bridges to open new paths.

7. AI Bridge crossing scenario dont end up in units jam.

8. Map/scenario builder with no coding skills

9. no micromanagement

10. True LOS

11. MP lobby was fantastic... (in COH you cant even name your game as you want!!!???)

list might go on, but i think you get my point...

Gameplay was fast, you lose units fast and you recover just as fast.

Today, hardly any RTS has any of this!!!

These days companies offer commanders, heroes, upgrades, perks... wich is PITA to properly balance and units AI is equal to a dead cat... (you need to click'n move it or just rotate it or it just sits there).

I own a small company and for some time i was eager to develop a proper RTS but since i could not find any decent programers i abandoned that idea... but one never knows...

BR

Vixus

I'm surprised no one has brought up Grey Goo - the new RTS from Petroglyph (who have a few original CnC devs) that just came out last week. It's very munch in the old CnC style with a focus on friendly play and macro over intense micromanagement. It even has Frank Klepacki doing the music. Granted, the campaign is pretty brutally hard, but if you've been missing CnC this is pretty much the spiritual successor to the good ones.

As to why the genre has been "dying"... I would say it's because no one figured out how to make one on console. Halo Wars made a good attempt but I don't think it sold too well. As much as I hate to say it, if you're a genre that only works on PC, most AAA publishers won't touch you with a 10 foot pole.

Fortunately we have plenty of non-publisher-controlled devs that seem to be bringing back the old PC-centric genres via smaller publishers or crowdfunding.

This is totally what I was going to bring up when I saw this topic. It's pretty unique and hits a lot of bullet points. They've got an interesting approach to resource gathering where you build the drop-off point, then mark the gather point, and free collectors are automatically built and make the gathering round-trip. It has the benefits of both worlds -- less stupid mandatory micro and while still retaining the tactical resource denial opportunities.

I find the game somewhat "meh" overall, but it's a good example that there's still some activity in the genre. Too bad it has the most unmarketable name ever.

Going back in the thread a bit:

It seems like a lot of "modern" games suffer from the same thing ...

1: Very short play time - apparently the developers think players all have ADD now-a-days, and are afraid to make each level last longer than 4 minutes.

2: Very simplistic game play - push button, win the internet ! Do the devs seriously think players now can not figure out more complex game play mechanics ?

3: Very repetitive - this happens a LOT in FPS and MOBA ... do the exact same thing over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over ...

This is the problem.

Here is the game I want:

1. Something like the old Warcraft 2 style engine. A 30 minute match is quick. I want the ability to have 4-9 players to run a 2-hour marathon game, perhaps 2v2, 3v3, 2v2v2, 4v4, or 3v3v3, or even a huge free-for-all, where at the end of the two hour session the teams can talk about how epic their match was for them.

2. There is a difference between strategy and tactics. Strategy is thinking broad. I want to control groups of units, something games like EA's LotR RTS did well. Build a group of archers/soldiers/spiders/whatever, then control them as groups. A good balance tends to be 5-7 unit types, each potentially with an upgrade/specialization on them.

3. Many of the MOBA-style games are a stupid choice. It is very nearly a false choice, since the choices usually don't mean very much. Both sides are running through the top/middle/bottom routes, and the "strategy" is mostly about flow control. OFPS tends to be similar, everyone runs to one of three or four choke points on the map and treats it like WW1 trench warfare, advance one trench, go back a trench, advance a trench...

In the older RTS games you had several elements going on simultaneously. You need a supply line to harvest trees/gold/spice/whatever, you have a tech tree starting with low-power infantry, then more range and more firepower, ending with aircraft/eagles/griffins/whatever. There are defensive and offensive structures. Once far enough up the tech tree you can spawn new bases elsewhere as fallback positions or forward camps. You needed to think about broad strategies, with individual games requiring either more or less control of individual troops.

You could try several strategies, hence the "S" in the game. One player could attempt an early rush to kill the opponent's supply lines, but if they are not successful they have no infrastructure and quickly lose. Some players could amass huge armies of low-level units to overrun defenses at the risk of having less defense against higher technology. Others could build multiple bases so they can fight like a bunch of small weeds. Some players sacrifice early attacks focusing on building high-yield attacks quickly: one favored strategy in C&C:RA was to quickly build seven airfields with migs, if all seven can successfully hit the main manufacturing building it will collapse leaving the opponent unable to build new buildings. It was also an extremely risky strategy since if you are unsuccessful and lose even a single aircraft the strategy will fail and you will reveal that you likely have no defense against a ground invasion.

Rather than just "attack top/middle/bottom" you needed actual strategy and knowledge of your opponents. Are they the type of person to quickly send in several grunts to kill your peons? Do you need to quickly build air defenses in case of an early mig strike? Do you need to send out scouts early as they're likely to spawn out to many tiny hit-and-run bases? Should your own actions be primarily offensive or primarily defensive against this opponent? How much effort do you spend defending your own supply lines versus attacking your opponent? That is STRATEGY.

RTS games were never popular. The audience was always small, you are just confused by the large audience for games that aren't RTS games. I'd suggest that the audience is about the same size but less games are made because people demand the bells and whistles of simpler genres which costs a lot more money to do for RTS thus making them unprofitable. Unprofitable is not the same as unpopular.

While small it appears that the tournament funding for the SC2 scene has been diminishing slowly since 2012 before the expansion was even released while it is also being "out-popularized" by MOBA games in which the funding has increased exponentially.

Starcraft 2, believe it or not, is already an old game. It is expected that its popularity will decline over time, but that doesn't go to say the entire genre is following in its wake.

Legacy of the Void is just a DLC by another name afterall.

Also, the RTS definition should probably get broadened a bit. To a certain degree, MOBAs "sort of" fit that description even, what may be in decline is the 8 players vying for resources and base building model.

Large publishers do not really target the PC market (hi-rate of piracy), other then producing sequel after sequel of an already successful brand. The console market is by far more interesting for publishers and RTS games are notorious hard to play with a controller.

Interesting, especially given the fact it was heralded the console market would die after the current generation and that PS4 and X-Box One would have trouble selling games. Publishers MAY prefer consoles, but the consumers have the ultimate say into what they'll end up buying. IF the RTS genre IS in decline, chances are it would be based on poor player response to the genre. The market does not appear to have reached saturation, but it could be that production costs are high.

One of the particular challenges of producing a good RTS is balancing, which often requires a lot of post-launch operations / maintenance / patching, and observation. Many developers are moving away from a development model that requires maintenance because of the sheer costs it incurs (large publishers remain relatively unscathed this far as they generally get the sales they need to finance these efforts).

They dont have much room for new ideas beyond theme.

On this, I tend to agree. Dune II, the original RTS, was almost the definition of feature creep. For a first installment, it had it all, and it has been hard for this genre to redefine itself. Most attempts have failed, although a few twists (Warhammer 40k Dawn of War I for example) helped keeping it fresh for a bit. The truth is that it's hard to make an RTS that hasn't been done before without breaking any of the restrictive rules of what people believe an RTS "is" (base building, resource collection, tech tree).

That being said, a few grand strategy and 4X games released in the last few years (even some indies that made it well on Steam) were almost essentially RTS games but somehow didn't exactly fit the definition.

To a degree, the RTS definition may be a bit too restrictive and require some revision. Good developers are focusing on making "good games", they don't really care if its an RTS or not.

The last time it mattered to BE an RTS was really back when Westwood and Blizzard fought over the crown of RTS (leading to some amazing games!). I'd like to think that this was a special time and shouldn't be considered the norm against which to determine whether a genre is dying.

"heavy dependence on RNG to determine range combat"

As far as I know, the only RTS game that does not utilise RNG for range combat, but instead uses real-time projectile hitboxes, was Battle Realms (quite a gem, this one). In my case, it was Company of Heroes, where I've seen far too many times a shell swerves through a building block to destroy my units, simply because the RNG says "the shot was a hit, so I will defy physics and make sure it hits". This can lead to tactics and strategy being of lesser value once RNG becomes apparent to the player, which would blur the identity of an RTS game being that of strategy and tactics.

Right, it's late, I'm tired and I got a class tomorrow. I'll probably continue this some other time.

Supreme Commander is another game that uses real time physics to calculate hits for all weapons (not just artillery and cannon). I'll stop raving about this game now.

They dont have much room for new ideas beyond theme.

On this, I tend to agree. Dune II, the original RTS, was almost the definition of feature creep. For a first installment, it had it all, and it has been hard for this genre to redefine itself. Most attempts have failed, although a few twists (Warhammer 40k Dawn of War I for example) helped keeping it fresh for a bit. The truth is that it's hard to make an RTS that hasn't been done before without breaking any of the restrictive rules of what people believe an RTS "is" (base building, resource collection, tech tree).

That being said, a few grand strategy and 4X games released in the last few years (even some indies that made it well on Steam) were almost essentially RTS games but somehow didn't exactly fit the definition.

To a degree, the RTS definition may be a bit too restrictive and require some revision. Good developers are focusing on making "good games", they don't really care if its an RTS or not.

The last time it mattered to BE an RTS was really back when Westwood and Blizzard fought over the crown of RTS (leading to some amazing games!). I'd like to think that this was a special time and shouldn't be considered the norm against which to determine whether a genre is dying.

That's true, but there have been some innovations. Take Battlestations: Midway and Battlestations: Pacific. Both these games (which, by the way, were successfully ported to the Xbox 360 console with great effect) were a very weird kind of game. They weren't exactly ship simulator or aircraft simulators and while they certainly had the notion being RTS in some aspects, they lacked base building, resource gathering, etc. to really be classified as RTS (in fact, Wikipedia calls it a real time tactics game). However, the game still has those elements of strategy and command in it. I agree that RTS is a restrictive definition: there must be base building, resource gathering, etc. in order for it to be an RTS. We are still seeing games that involve commanding units and using different strategies to win the game: it's just that not all of them use every single element that is really common in an RTS.

Partially I also think that it's just the era of FPS and open world FPS, similar to how there was an era for simulators and an era for platformers.

RTS games were never popular. The audience was always small, you are just confused by the large audience for games that aren't RTS games. I'd suggest that the audience is about the same size but less games are made because people demand the bells and whistles of simpler genres which costs a lot more money to do for RTS thus making them unprofitable. Unprofitable is not the same as unpopular.

I'm not entirely sure if I agree with that. It's true that RTS games were never popular, but at the same time I'd say that there are less people in the audience altogether. Most of them have moved on to MOBAs.

I would say it's because no one figured out how to make one on console.

Command & Conquer : Tiberian Sun

That was an excellent N64 game, however if you want to go way back, we have North & South for the NES / Atari 2600 .

Modern RTSs suffer from some problems:

1.) bases wide open to attack, no minefields or fences or tank obstacles like in real life, or AoE2.
2.) problem of scale, both of buildings, units, environment, and resource amounts and measuring units. Scales don't match or are poorly defined or expressed or adhered to by the artist, leading to unrealistic or nebulous feeling. Working on this area can make the game feel more real, like AoE2.
3.) limited to max 8 players. Limiting lockstep net turn to 1 second or more might help reduce traffic and increase player limit.
4.) no drop in mid game. spring RTS fixed this though by allowing players to join mid game and "fast forward" through a history of the game.

Modern RTSs suffer from some problems:

1.) bases wide open to attack, no minefields or fences or tank obstacles like in real life, or AoE2.
2.) problem of scale, both of buildings, units, environment, and resource amounts and measuring units. Scales don't match or are poorly defined or expressed or adhered to by the artist, leading to unrealistic or nebulous feeling. Working on this area can make the game feel more real, like AoE2.
3.) limited to max 8 players. Limiting lockstep net turn to 1 second or more might help reduce traffic and increase player limit.
4.) no drop in mid game. spring RTS fixed this though by allowing players to join mid game and "fast forward" through a history of the game.

1) StarCraft at least lets you build static defences which do pretty much the same job. Eg. the Zerg have sunken colonies/spine crawlers, Protoss have photon cannons, Terrans have missile turrets, bunkers, and mines. There must be other games that allow this.

2) Is this really that relevant to gameplay?

3) Age of Mythology allowed up to 12 players, if I remember correctly.

4) Some RTSs allow saving the game partway through the match and resuming it later. I agree that for slower strategic games this could be nice, but for more fast-paced games leaving for even a few seconds means you're done, so the entire game would have to come to a halt.