One of the problems I see with some RTS that hurts the genre’s appeal to more casual or simply more laid-back players is the artificially inflated APM required to execute basic tasks. The most blatant example of this kind of mechanical obstacle I can think of (apart from just bad pathfinding) was the selection cap in the original Starcraft, where you could only select 12 units at a time. If the player wanted to move more units, you had to select them in separate groups and give the order multiple times. That’s multiple physical actions (selecting and ordering each sub-group) to accomplish one theoretical action that the player actually wants (“move my army here.”)

With this, if I recall, in StarCraft you can select your group of say 12, and have them follow a unit. Then you can have another group follow the same unit. You then move that one unit and 24 other units follow.

One of the problems I see with some RTS that hurts the genre’s appeal to more casual or simply more laid-back players is the artificially inflated APM required to execute basic tasks. The most blatant example of this kind of mechanical obstacle I can think of (apart from just bad pathfinding) was the selection cap in the original Starcraft, where you could only select 12 units at a time. If the player wanted to move more units, you had to select them in separate groups and give the order multiple times. That’s multiple physical actions (selecting and ordering each sub-group) to accomplish one theoretical action that the player actually wants (“move my army here.”)

With this, if I recall, in StarCraft you can select your group of say 12, and have them follow a unit. Then you can have another group follow the same unit. You then move that one unit and 24 other units follow.

This is, AFAIK, a Blizzard's choice. Other RTS don't have this limitation. It seems, by-design, Blizzard intended to have its players click a lot.

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.

Well said.

I saw also that a few people mentioned unlimited zoom and real time projectiles, which are great features to have in an RTS. (They’re also both present in my game.) Unlimited zoom is not always necessary, and it’s going to be much more difficult if the game has actual terrain to render, but it’s certainly a nice feature to have and it gets me to my broader point; that it makes it easier for the player to see the battlefield and manage his armies, without taking control away from the player. For me, that’s one of the core design philosophies for good RTS gameplay: make it easy for the player to do what he wants to do, as long as the computer isn’t actually making decisions for the player.

In real life, you'd have maps and/or aerial photographs. What's wrong with that approach in a game... if you want to view zoomed out a lot, display a 2D representation of the map with coloured dots.

Speaking of base defences, I loved that aspect of WC2 and C&C/RA - building walls and defensive weapons. Especially the Tesla towers :) But it seemed even in those games, such things were not useful in multiplayer games. I seem to recall in TA they were useful to protect against air attacks?

This thread is making me want to resurrect my old RTS project!

Now, I love RTS games.. after the Civ series they are probably my most played game type (although TF2 probably redressed the balance a bit) but I am wondering where some of you people have managed to get rose tinted glasses on bulk order from?

My experience of (older) RTS games tends to consist of one of two initial paths;
1) Build small rush army to send at other base
2) Build small defensive army to deal with initial rush

At which point you then tend to settle into a case of can I hold my line to get my better weapons out before his smaller ones crush me or can I break his line while tech'ing up to delay his better weapons.

Games like Total Annihilation, Sup Com and Dawn Of War simply become a meat grinder of who can last the longest before a flaw in the defense was found. Other games aren't much different, you just have the joy of defending/attacking resource harvesting to try and disrupt your opponent.

In games like Company Of Heroes, which at least has some small base defense to start with to discourage the initial rush, can get bogged down with a mass of weak units attacking quickly and disrupting your own build up at low cost to the enemy. (In CoH this is basically flame thrower equipped engineers who are cheap but can mess you up quickly).

Even in the modern 4X games the 'strategy' tends to be little more than 'find area with resource <x> and control it asap' based on race. Taking Sins Of A Solar Empire, for example, if I know my race happens to require a heavy metal bias then I'll logically grab planets with metal resources as a higher priority. After that you can build towards a mixed fleet based around a few capital ships and play a game of 'can my fleet out mass the enemy'.

(As a side note on RUSE; I played it when it first came out and I had a 100% win record vs humans. How? Build marines quickly. Send marines into woods. Wait for enemy units to come past. Blow them away. Walk into base. Bluffing simply wasn't a good plan which kinda kills the whole 'ruse' aspect of it.)

That's not to say through all this I think the games are bad, it just seems people are a little rose tinted

Also, RUSE aside, the games I've mentioned with their flaws I also loved at the time. DoW and expansions burned a lot of my time online, TA and Sup Com the same and Sins continues to from time to time.

Of the newer breed of RTS games I'm a large fan of the Wargame series which removes base building and instead makes land control your income and does force a degree of strategy (after the initial 'arrgggh...' as everyone rushes to setup choke points and capture land) when it comes to how you deal with attacking and defending areas. (Although the recent ships expansion has slightly unbalanced that vs AI at least as you can just call in a massive ship and lolcake all over their faces with it's ranged cannons...).

Gun to my head however I have to say my favourite game in this general sphere was, and remains, Ground Control. Not only was it a tactical game but it removed my biggest bugbear which was 'lol as many people for this meat grinder as we need' aspect of games, instead forcing you to only work with what you took into the mission. Nexus: The Jupiter Incident is another example of this style of game which to a degree I prefer as you have to be a bit more careful with your units knowing that when they are gone they are gone.

I am wondering where some of you people have managed to get rose tinted glasses on bulk order from?

Ditto. I seem to remember rushing tactics all the way back to Warcraft II.

I think my main complaint about the RTS genre as I get older is that most mainstream RTS titles conflate 3 different game types, and attempt to roll them all into the same experience:

• The resource meta-game. Assign peasants to collect resources, build more peasants, build more farms, tech up, rinse and repeat. Timing of build orders is critical, or your opponent will outdo you in both resource gathering and tech level.
• Strategic land grab. Expand your base, build new bases at resource locations, deploy static defenses at chokepoints. Timing of expansions is critical or your opponent will have more resources than you do, timing of static defenses is critical, or you opponent will control map movement.
• Tactics/Micro. Kite individual units across the battlefield to maximise damage dealt vs damage taken. Constant micro is critical, as you derive 2x or greater combat efficiency versus non-micro'd units.

Any of those items individually would be a fun game, but the combination is overwhelming. In my (only vaguely competitive) starcraft days, I was moderately good at items 1 and 2, and not at all at the micro - this made the entire game no fun, since I couldn't compete. Even at my best I was only a solid team player, producing large numbers of units and relying on my teammates to micro them.

I think the major RTS developers have recognised this, at last. Your typical MOBA is the result of taking the micro element by itself, reducing it to a single unit, and producing a full game around it. And MOBAs are nothing if not successful. Maybe it is time that developers took a shot at separating items 1 and 2 into their own genres?

Your typical MOBA is the result of taking the micro element by itself, reducing it to a single unit, and producing a full game around it. And MOBAs are nothing if not successful.

Spot on!

1. Majority of gamers don't want to use much of their brain powers (otherwise they would play ultimate strategy called CHESS) so, RTS games tends to be demanding.

2. Thinking on 2 or 3 things at the same time (development, resources and fighting)... too demanding also.

3. to much of micromanaging is also too demanding...

so, for succesfull RTS we need...

1. straight forward battles

2. no resouces and bases what so ever.

3. not much units to controll, preferably just one. (more units acceptable but only as AI controlled minions)

and what do we get?

MOBA!

So, clasical RTS is not for everybody and here comes the MOBA's to fill the gap.

There kind of are games that eliminate one or more of the game types in an RTS. If you take just the resource and building part, you’ve basically got a city builder, and having strategy without micro is just a turn-based strategy.

There’s also Real Time Tactics, where you have army control but without resource collection or base building. The actual real time battles in Total War are RTT even though the overall game is also often considered an RTS, but outside of that, the genre hasn’t been as popular as RTS, it seems like it’s a potential middle ground that’s been skipped over in favor of MOBAs.

I've never heard the acronym MOBA before. Huh?

Are turn-based games still going strong? I would imagine they en-capture much more the spirit of an "epic RTS" - battles, long-running games? Or is the idea of a "turn based RTS" not really around?

There are several large warcraft 3 communities still around playing modded maps, although they lost a lot to Starcraft 2. Mobas are basically a map mod of SC1/WC3, Aeon of Strife into DotA, then come MOBAs. Citybuilders are still popular and several have come out and are coming out. TBS is probably the best bet when it comes to strategy. The speed at which an RTS runs and the scale of the game tends to make any strategy based victory impossible. Plus people play the same dumb maps over and over so quick thinking on your feet is pointless when someone drops the ideal build order for every map online.

There were some more interesting RTS games, like WarlordsBattlecry, but the competitive players hated it. It was more about fun than PVP balance. Games lasted much longer as well.

Personally I started playing Paradox games, and epic scale TBS like Dominions, but sadly Paradox has a very limited stable of games and their mechanics have begun to be dumbed down over time.