2024 is going to save RTS.
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- čas přidán 30. 06. 2024
- 2024 is going to save RTS.
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00:00 RTS Games: Then vs Now
03:11 Studio Expectations: Fun/Competitive
06:46 Major RTS Games in the last 25 Years
08:49 Who's Aiming to build a "Classic RTS w/ Esports"
12:05 Major RTS Games and Their Respective Audience Sizes
12:59 Can Starcraft 2 be Dethroned?
16:14 We've Been Spoiled!
18:34 Conclusion
#GrubbyTalks #React #Thoughts - Zábava
theres just one angry dad outside of korea playing it 🤣
we love you artosis
That joke almost murdered me xD
My favorite insult Art ever said was when he was raging because he lost, he said you almost lose somebody almost 40 with 3-4 kids. It's kind of like a self diss. Like he's so old he should be bad.
We were on a break Blizzard 🤣
All of the games in that competitive list started as single player with an MP mode attached for people who wanted to continue playing (And they have modding support), not the other way around. Designing a game purely to make an e-sport has little chance to stick to the wall if no one even plays the game to begin with.
Yep i don't understand why game devs so obsessed with e sports when e sports never bring any profit for the game itself
Exactly why Age of Empires is still alive and well in 2024 (and they're about to release a single player focused DLC). People reaaally underestimate how many people play these games for the single player campaigns instead of (just) multiplayer
starcraft 2 was specifically made for the esports though! it is the only rts that was both made to support an esports scene and massively successful.
they just didn't forget the campaigns and custom games.
@@purpleisthesneakiest I think the difference there is that it's a sequel to a game that already had an e-sports scene at that point, so there was already a sense of anticipation from the player base. For an entirely new franchise it's a different story.
@@purpleisthesneakieststill, the campaigns were much worse than sc1, and multiplayer, while being fun and very spectator-friendly, took incomparably more maintenance than sc1 (check when the last BW patch was released)
There's this little old RTS called Rise of Nations where workers were semi-automated by sending them to work on infinite resource nodes. It imposed caps on your economy that would be slowly lifted as the match progressed. By making the economic aspect of the game much simpler than many of its contemporanies the game was able to change the focus from economy to base building.
CLASIIIC maaan i liked rise of legends even more, its more akin to warcraft, theres camps to clear heroes special abilities, so many cool mechanics well combined, wish it had a sequel, that would have been a g0d RTS
Yes Rise of Nation was so fun and it plays with more intensity than Blizzard or Micrsoft's RTS.
funfact: RoN is based on the Engine of AoE2 and made by designer that did the civlizations spin-off Alpha Centauri. They later made a semi-sequel Rise of Legends, which had a whacky (but in my opinion very fun) steam-punk-fantasy-scenarion, but it sold extremly poorly. I think also because its only marketing ploy was to make a 100k$ tournament, in a state where one of the three factions was not viable at all and most games where mirror-matches between the best faction/hero combo.
@@sokarash Yeah there was hardly any marketing for Rise of Legends. Don't think I ever saw a trailer or an article on the game anywhere. Despite loving Rise of Nations, I only knew Rise of Legends existed because the box art caught my eye as I walked past a game store and I went "dragons? giant clockwork robots? I must get this game".
@@sokarash Alpha Centauri is my favored Civilizzation game of all times. One of the best 4X games ever made.
Age of Mythology: Retold now coming in 2024 and should be interesting. I doubt it has a chance to be as popular as the big 5 since it’s both an Age franchise and (sadly) the one many people overlooked back in the day.
Yeah I expect it to be very popular if it's well done. I'm really looking forward to it personally. I may try out Age of Empires III in order to familiarize myself with the engine, seeing as how AoM will be rebuilt in AoE3 engine rather than being remastered in its own engine
Well I want them to deliver with big improvments and new features on the campaign because I remember that if AoM is one my favorite RTS franchise of all time it is mainly due to the fact that back then AoM had a much better single player campaign than AoE. I want them to deliver something like the SC2 Wings of Liberty campaign which is my favorite RTS campaign number one in front of Warcraft 3 campaign if consider both vanilla versions, without the extensions that came later (in SC2 they just suck). The solo player campaign is very important and so underrated for RTS nowadays, I think there still is a lot than can possibly be done to make a solo campaign just as enticing as online competitive match ups. A though for kids who just like me back then could spend hours just on one mission to defend a siege. Online competitive is for experienced gamers and a repellent for nembies but experienced players can enjoy a good solo campaign.
Ifk if AOM would make a good esport.
It's a great game. It can be fun to play in multi-player.
But a ranked ladder esport? There's some things that are way too unbalanced. And balancing them would take away from the game.
@Talks Is that confirmed? I heard that rumor, but no confirmation of any sort. Plus just using the engine can mean nothing, if they change enough, it can feel very different. AoE4 is based on Relics Essence engine, which also powered Company of Heroes and Dawn of War 3 - which play and feel very differently. At least for me filthy casual ;)
I got to play a demo of the campaign back in the day and was hooked
Battle for Middle Earth 1 and 2 are games that have a very cool concept with slower battles, bigger armies (battalions rather than single units), but still a lot of micro and macro. They were just abandoned by EA and only remained movie based titles which is a shame, because they had a lot of potential with proper balancing and slightly better maps.
BfME 2 was so incredibly awesome. I played this game so much
that game was amazing. The hero units were something special
BFME have shit balance tho, elf archers are to good.
@@heavyflamerheresy2581 In my opinion everything there was unbalanced. It was a gian cluster fuck of OP units and spells
I don't know about BFME 2, but for BFME 1 it was very well balanced. I used to play multiplayer games (EA had BFME online) everyday. I watched many replays to master. But unfortunetely on a new years eve, EA killed it and killed my hopes about any RTS. Still remembering good old days when you stack leadership and combos and demolish everything.
Frostpunk is not an RTS, it's a survival management game. RTS games necessarily include building units and buildings, and being able to control them as main gameplay elements. The reason Dawn of War 2&3 and Company of Heroes are RTT rather than RTS is because they has little to no base-building, whereas Frostpunk is not an RTS because you essentially don't build units and certainly can't move them on the map to attack an enemy base.
Calling all of these games RTS instead of being more specific, deludes the meaning of RTS so much that it becomes too difficult to know what the word means, and using it in that way also means that the importance of the word diminishes
RTS means Real Time Strategy it's easy to understand and also very broad, if anything calling sc2 and wc3 RTS is where the lack of specifity shines. That said it makes sense that they are called this way as we are creatures of habit.
@@xelinco3005 The meaning of the individual words, real-time and strategy, are very broad, but the subgenre real-time strategy is less broad than that, it's a subgenre to the strategy genre. Of course Frostpunk and Company of Heroes are strategy games, just as Stracraft is a strategy game, but they are not strategy games in the same sense, hence belonging to different subgenres, survival/management, RTT and RTS respectively.
True, it was weird example. You pause the game in Frost punk nearly every time you want to plan out city, how can you call it ,,real time" game
Denotation vs. connotation
The denotation of “RTS” is any strategy game that plays out in real time. Dota, Company of Heroes, and a plethora of other games fit this definition.
There are several connotations of “RTS” that permeate western culture. One of them is the one that Grubby is using, that an RTS is a strategy game where you make workers collect resources and build buildings, while training and commanding army units.
@@stigs6610 you're exactly right, it is a matter of denotation and connotation
I play RTS for the campaign story. Most RTS after WoW came out fell short in this regard, somehow they were focusing on multi-player aspect of the game. Frostpunk is more of a survival simulation.
rly ? sc2 for me had the best story of any rts ever
wings of liberty was like a movie
Yeah, I pretty much only played the campaign and custom maps in WC3 in its glory day, and mostly come back to the game to play the campaign again.
Also did all the achievements on Brutal on Starcraft 2 because the story was so good and I like the single player experience more, aswell as the co-op missions.
Sadly, RTS players are usually way too strong and sadly more toxic too than the average beginning player in MP such as myself, to make the genre fun to play for a casual audience, especially now that there's such a gap in skill between an old RTS player and a newer one. Which is why I tend to not play much MP in RTS games, even in the ones where I suck the least like WC3.
@@DaxRaider SC2 had insane productions values, but the story was cheesy-trash, even compard to Broodwar (and reversed some of the decisions their - remember good ol' Jimmy wanting to kill Kerrigan instead of marring her?).
Dawn of War series has extremely good campaign and story, though in DoW2 the campaign is barely RTS at all and more of a tactical RPG (still great though)
@@sokarash Kerrigan going from queen bitch of the universe to "help me Jim save me Jim wah I love you Jim" was the most cringe change to a character in modern memory on par with like Game of Thrones final season tier writing
tooth and tail deserves an honorary mention. the game unfortunately never became somewhat known but the idea and looks were really fun
Tooth and tail was great!
I got that game because of TB was one of his last reviewed games.
It has a really fun campaign, great music and a good overall sense of style and I recommended it for that alone. It didn't work as a competitive multiplayer game, though. The combination of unit drafting and random maps was very swingy and most games I played were very one sided.
I think you also hit it with that the kids aren't playing. The developers are trying to make things "easier" and not more fun. We all played it as kids because it was so fun and immersive, not because its easy to jump into competitive sports, like skateboarding - it started as a way of having fun and all of the competition is a spin off, but when you try and nake it easier like adding handlebars, suddenly you have a scooter and not s skateboard
The kids aren't playing, yet games like AoE4 are made pandering to them instead of the classic fans. They should focus on making good games, the e-sports, hype and boom in sales comes after ppl play a game and enjoy it.
They're trying anything to get kids to play, and I guess that means making the game easier to play. With kids being surrounded by dopamine boosters like Fortnite and COD, I think it's just very difficult today for a kid to sit down and play a game that starts slow and builds up to a finish, like an RTS.
The thought of my hypothetical kid preferring fortnite over wc3/sc2/aoe4 gives me a shiver@@Skeptouchos
@@GrubbyTalks I let my 1 year old smack my keyboard a few times on starcraft cute mode, she loves it. I think she'll turn out alright
The problem with RTS games is that it hey are difficult to make without much profit gained from it. Warcraft and Starcraft were the peak of RTS cause you could play them both competitively and casually, they also just had a really cool dark/edgy atmosphere to them. Developers in the late 1990s to early 2000s were far more willing to take risks and make "controversial" games.
Only indie developers would be willing to commit their talent and resources to making an RTS game these days.
Why are RTS games difficult to make? I would get it when people say that a story-driven RPG game is difficult to make. Because you need so many stories, recorded dialogue, world-building, all the usual gameplay like items, fighting, crafting, experience, skillls, leveling. But for an RTS you just need a vision of what a fun RTS would be. And you can just create a game where you collect your resources, build your base, create your armies, and fight. You can literally do it 1 thing at a time and you still have a functional game. You can literally have an RTS game where you have only 1 map, can build only 1 building, and can produce only 1 unit. And if you have an actual vision for how to make RTS fun, this can be fun. You can literally make it with 3 people in 4 weeks.
Nah this is a misleading approach. A good RTS with a solo campaign that honors the great one would make a killing. There is a lot that can be done to make a solo campaign likeable with well designed achievements that unlock new in game features but this concept has been put in the dark since the rise of costly DLCs. It is coming back with indies though, look at a game like Roboquest which is a totally different genre and you are getting close to it. Or ELder Rings too, where you have secrets everywhere, Bosses found very well hidden like you have to crouch through a wall to get to a huge place etc. Games nowadays lack a sens of secrecy because of internet but this is counterable with some well thought quirks.
@@Prometheus4096 RTS are difficult to make cause they require a tons of gameplay depth while simultaneously being fairly balanced. Otherwise it wont be fun/engaging for the competitive/hardcore players.
What made Warcraft 3 fun for the casual players was mostly due to the incredible whole Custom maps system.
I agree that the graphic requirements are not that resource consuming, but I still maintain that they require a lot of creative talent by the developers.
@@kroooassant9899 LoL, Fortnite, Palworld, Minecraft, none of them have single player stories. A single player story-driven campaign is definitely a lot of work. But absolutely not needed for a slam dunk hit game. If you'd told me that a story driven game like GTA 5 or Witcher/Cyberpunk/Baldur's Gate is expensive to make, I'd say yes. But you don't need to do that. Of course, Blizzard has to. But they had the budget to do so. And still made an inferior game.
@@blankeon6613 That's abolutely not true. Starcraft Brood War was never balanced, except for increasing spawning pool from 150 minerals to 200 minerals. And every unit was used completely different as envisioned by the developers. And it was a slam dunk. SC2 had like a gazillion balance patches and it didn't make any difference. So you are wrong.
"one angry dad"
OMEGALUL LMAOOO
AoE 2 has new generetion of players also in TOP16 player Recent ongoing tournament Hidden cup 5 has alot new players and also arguably top1 player Hera is only 25 So there are future in RTS
In the last year Hera won 5 S-tier tournaments and got second place in only S-tier tournament he didn't win.
I don't think the qualifier "arguably" is necessary here. Interestingly, if you go back 6 months before that and his results weren't as impressive - I think he was still recovering from the swap to/from AoE4.
Team game RTS is all we need.
now Aoe2 has the best team games of all games.
SG - promised something, we will see... but my expectation for TG is low: 1. they aiming at 1vs1. 2. gameplay will be different even a little - which would divide ppl.
So... Team game RTS let's go.
Relic made company of heroes and dawn of war, idk if I can agree they dont have experience with multiplayer rts :P They had small competitive scenes, even as far as being at wcg back in thr day.
I enjoy these little talk clips, good insights
They have experience with Multiplayer RTS, but not competitive high level esports multiplayer RTS, an important distinction. If you followed AoE4, you know. We're talking about things like being able to see enemy Walls THROUGH fog of war because they were terrain-altering. Really fine in an SP game, but in MP, that's allowing a form of "unfair info" cheating. Except, in this case, not with a maphack, but with an inexperienced (in multi esports) dev team that's not prepared for making an esports rts game.
Such good game but the balance was so wrong. Still a pleasure to play some game on Soulstorm tho :)
To be fair, CoH and DoW are very much tactical RTS, they never focused nearly as much on the economy and macro focus that most classical RTS does, especially after the first DoW which was the closest to a classic RTS. Same genre but still a super different type of game almost on the same scale as comparing SC2 to Frostpunk.
@GrubbyTalks I feel like on some patches of league, you've been able to see enemy abilities through fog of war :P
I just feel like if we excuse that with "lacks experience" then the only dev with experience becomes blizzard, no?
And both the latest dawn of war AND company of heroes flopped and were disliked by the fans.
AOE2 is still alive :D
You mentioned that StarCraft has an old contol scheme, id say that the limit on unit selection is such a big thing in RTS. Even WC3 has 24 units max, StarCraft being 12. This is imperative and its now always unlimited selection. But because you can only select 12 in sc, you are forced to make decisions on how to move and position your units. Hacinf everything move perfectly at the same time is nice, but a big detrement to rts immersion imo, no army is perfect in sync, unless you design it into the lore or whatever for a race.
Also they made it in remastered where you can set custom hotkeys, but not entirely custom like sc2 this was great step in thr right direction for modernizing the game without breaking it
You know what, it's funny, I hadn't realized until you sort of pointed it out - All of the Blizzard-like RTS games coming out are made by a different subset of SC2 and WC3 peeps.
Stormgate is made by former Blizzard RTS devs.
Immortal: GOP is made by former Blizzard RTS mapmakers and modders.
ZeroSpace is made by former Blizzard RTS pro players.
The challenge with competitive RTS is that the cost to the player is perhaps 90% represented by the time it takes to learn to play. Meanwhile the developer can only profit off the dollar cost of the game. If your time is worth $20 an hour and it takes you 20 hours of suffering before you stop getting stomped on ladder, you've spent $400 before you start recouping on your investment, but when you do, the return is likely to be orders of magnitude more than the money you paid to the developer. So in the extreme case, game purchasers are divided into those that didn't get their money's worth because they didn't invest the time, and those that could easily get more 100X value from the game than the value of the money they paid to the developer.
You made some great points.. I think it's also interesting how so many studios have revealed their new RTS before they are ready.. or launching them pre maturely... and poorly. We have kept a tight lid on our new RTS on purpose while we watch all these other ones come out. It is great to see so many new creations. The one thing that does get old is how there are quite a few with very few original ideas unfortunately. Thank you for a great video. Keep up the great work. 👍
Level headed Grubby. Such a treat in the modern internet video sphere
Inviting everyone to watch the Hidden Cup 5 tournament for AoE 2. $50k prize pool with anonymous players so the guessing game is part of the experience. This weekend over at T90's channel on Twitch or CZcams, already hit over 30k viewers over all platforms which is great for an RTS in 2024. RTS Hype!
My tip is 2089 Space Divided - an indie studio from Germany is developing an RTS with multiplayer with the community, still in early access, but already a lot of fun
yeah SC2 is such a masterpiece, hard to do better than that for next RTS
Say what you want about WC3, but it is a *masterpiece* of a game that is simply impossible to follow up from. Even the grapbhics, despite looking dated as you would expect from something that was designed from 1999 to 2002, is so pretty and state-of-the-art that it not only holds up today, but is actually better than 99.9% of all the graphics available today.
WC3 was the product of the most state-of-the-art PC gaming company ever, created during a time when it was at the absolute pinnacle to quality and craftsmanship. Like a Stradivarius violin, you cannot improve upon. After the failure of Reforged, Grubby has been desperately searching for a substitute to WC3, but he will never find this game. RTS is a small market, and no company today has the resources, passion, long-term orientation and crafstman-like quality that Blizzard had in the late 90's, early 2000's.
Everything about WC3 is state-of-the-art to a level that no game today can possibly even come close to: the mechanics, the unit designs, the richness and complexity of the races gameplay and of the maps, and the sheer engine that runs the damn thing. Blizzard in those days was a mult-billion Dollar company that was willing to spend as much as it took and take as long as it was needed to create the absolute best game imaginable. There is simply no company out there today that can afford to spend $20+ million in a singvle game and take 3+ years to create a single game, and then a year latter release an expansion that cost almost as much the original game.
The biggest "minus" of WC3 is that the game is just so damn hard. Except for maybe Brood War, I don't think that there is any game that can match or exceed the difficulty of WC3. Even SC2, despite having much grander "macro" and economy-management aspect than WC3, is still a simpler game. The sheer mechanics of WC3, the fact that the game demands such precise micro and timings, the entire hero dynamic which throws a monkey-wrench in the whole RTS aspect, and also the fact that the tech trees of WC3 and the entire creeping/harrassing/teching/pushing dynamic is so unfathomably complex that even the gods of the game like Moon, Infi, Grubby, etc, are still learning new things and getting stomped by new things even after 20 years makes it clear how intimidating the game is to new players. This is why, even though WC3 is easily top #10 best PC game ever(not just RTS), the game will never be very popular. It's a game for high IQ people with the finger dexterity of professional pianists. Just a really, really, really, really hard game.
There is also Beyond All reason that aim to be a big competitive classic RTS
feels more like a C&C
Sanctuary: Shattered Sun, another TA-/SupCom-like, also given the "Thumbs Up!" by RTS pioneer Chris Taylor
Def not like C&C. It's a modern total annihilation @@DaxRaider
Notable omission: the Total Annihilation branch of RTS.
As far as I'm concerned, the future of RTS is an open-source game. When something about the interface annoys me I can make a widget that fixes it or adds meaningful functionality that would require 500 APM in StarCraft, then share it with the community who will make it better still.
I'm talking about Beyond All Reason. Playing StarCraft again after learning that was rough.
Supreme Commander 1 was the peak of RTS. We soon will have his true spiritual successor: Sanctuary: Shattered Sun.
It's the same debate that was had in 2008 from broodwar to starcraft 2, how simplified and automated can the game get before it's no longer the same game? Some people prefer BW's difficult UI, some prefer SC2's. However, when asking questions about unlimited building select and unlimited unit select, if BW is inherently better than SC2 because of its core UI decisions, then shouldn't developers improve on BW's philosophy and make the UI even more obtuse and difficult? I haven't heard RTS players arguing that broodwar should have a unit selection cap of 6 rather than 12; however, that would make sense given the general trend of the discussion. Is a unit cap of 12 necessary for avoiding deathballs and differentiating player skill, and results in more interesting balance? A lot of BW players would say yes, because we have an example of a good game that has it, and they would point at SC2 as an example in their eyes of a failure given the simplification of mechanics.
It makes it confusing when developers continue to walk down the road of simplification as if it's the answer. I always thought that SC2 players would love further simplification, but it's interesting to hear people now complain in the same vein as 2008, just for a different point on the continuum of accessibility.
Yes. But since SC BW, all devs have deliberately talked down about Starcraft and said they don't want their game to be like that. Including the SC2 dev team. If you read the original Gamespot review of Starcraft, you will see that even then the reviewer attacked Starcraft for being too much about clicking fast. But also that the devs were smart to put in a maximum unit selection cap, which Starcraft beta didn't have, 'to prevent zergling rushes from being too powerful'. Starcraft became popular in Korea because Japanese games were banned and because of the PC Bang and internet culture. Not because their society is hypercomeptitive aobut games and need to turn everything into an esport. It only became an esport because so many people played it. And the reason so many people played it was because it was fun. And all those Koreans back in 1998-2002 played it at 40 apm.
games only get esports only if alot of people play it casually
If you want to be the biggest rts ever with esport you need a lot of invested players, and for that you need good campaign, map editor and balanced multiplayer first. I would even argue you need a long standing franchise of games. With each game you need to hone your skills, perfect your game amassing bigger and bigger community. That what Warcraft and Starcraft did. Same with AoE. Even LoL kind of stands on shoulders of giants like Dota and Warcraft 3 before it, Starcraft before it, War 2 and 1 before it. But fans just wait for the next big game out of nowhere.
A great take. What it made me realize is... If there's going to be a next big RTS it has to be truly innovative and original. Games like Stormgate are cool but they are more or less a rehash or a mashup of things that already exist.
I recently started playing aoe4 and the game is a blast, the online community is very active in game and outside (reddit, yt). For me wait times are around 1 minute for a somewhat balanced game (platinum ranking). I saw many low, mid an high level accounts.
The game istself is very enjoyable as a competitive game both to play and watch. It is very much inspired by history with many real life landmarks being inside the game which really ads flavor. If you haven't please give it a try
I'm hoping Age of Mythology: Retold is done right and helps bring in the new generation of kids into RTS. They've also said they would focus on the ESPORTS aspect of the game as well so there's that.
I'll be honest. Stormgate has nothing worth appealing to me, as a casual player, who enjoyed rts as a kid, but never delved into multiplayer of wc3 or sc2. I'll usually finish the campaign if it's good, but it's gonna take a lot more to make sitck with skirmish or especially multiplayer. I can guess the main reason is that classic rts have an inreachable skill ceiling, compared to other genres like fps or fightings.
Stormgate wants to make money by continuesly releasing new single player compaigns. If singleplayer is your go to, Stormgate might be fun enough.
Iron Harvest (indie-developed), CrossFire: Legion, Five Nations (indie-developed), Ancestors Legacy, SpellForce 3 (Reforced)
More choices today, and you better have a sterner and less stagnant spine than mine in suggesting more RTS games!
It's the same syndrome with oldschool fighting games:
Too difficult: only retain a hardcore audience.
Too easy with a gazillion assist systems: where is the fun in that?
People underestimate how important it is for your player to feel like they earned their skill in a game and not dump a bunch of assistance mechanics down.
The reason why Moba became huge despite evolving from RTS is because they didn't dumb an RTS down, they made new rules and factors to care about.
Classic example is Footmen Frenzy in WC3. It's a good enough game to be its own RTS because what the creators did was cut out some parts of an RTS like resource gathering and channeled new focus into other aspects of controlling an army.
Loved the car analogy (writing from mobile from my 2001 Corsa 1.8) but what had me rolling was the comment about SC1 "this game is only meant for watching and raging and for Koreans" :D
Nice one Grubster, nice one.
Grubby describing Blizzard as the villain in an NTR story is absolutely hilarious.
In any case, I think it depends on what people are thinking of when they say RTS. Do they mean RTS as an e-sport? Or "traditional" RTS as a Starcraft/Warcraft-esque game? Or does it include games like Frostpunk? Because if you think about it, perhaps RTS never went away. It just evolved. Maybe "traditional" RTS may have went away and is seeing a resurgence in 2024, but otherwise RTS and RTS-adjacent games have always been around.
Something I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on. While not an RTS itself, I've noticed Teamfight Tactics has scratched an itch for a lot of people I know that are interested in RTS. There has always been a subsection of RTS fans that have said something along the lines of "I'd be good if the game was about strategy and not micro". I wonder how many of that group are now playing TFT or similar games because the option is available to them.
Here is my take on the 'dumbing down':
I think the problem isn't that things are more convenient, because it becomes mechanically easier. I actually think that is fine, that 'layer' really only appeals to the super competitive minority.
BUT!
When they make it "accessible", they don't tend to just make it mechanically easier, but also remove OPTIONS, to 'streamline' and make decisions easier, clearer, and give less decisions to people. This removes the SPECTACLE of RTS.
Look at some old RTS like AoE3, with just batshit insane cards, politicians, natives, units with 4000 health. It's just all bonkers, but it makes it FUN.
Look at Red Alert 2 with completely unbalanced weird units. Spies stealing technologies, a bloody weather controlling superweapon.
I think what makes people have strong communities, is fun stuff you can do. This is why things like Garrys mod, TF2, Age of empires 3 etc., are undying. And if there is a community, there will be a community of competitive people.
Making "hardcore classic" games, or trying to "make a competitive scene" is stupid. Make a fun experience. Something that is a blast. Solid mechanics that run smoothly, and a lot of RTS Spectacle. People playing RTS want that fantasy of building a giant death robot. They want to build and defend a giant wonder that ticks down a victory times.
What they dont want is a sterile design, with few choices to speak of, made to be perfectly balanced for the 400 apm competitive 0.1%.
You're on to something. All the most successful RTS talked about had an AMAZING single player experience, even if mostly for the story. Starcraft 1 and 2, Warcraft 3, AoE2...all of them had incredible, iconic campaigns with well written stories that were very enjoyable to go through.
A newer big RTS game, even a "classic" one, needs to have a very good single player experience to compete with these giants, possibly even co-op missions or even campaigns. I know I'd play such a game in a heartbeat, while I wouldn't go to an RTS solely focused on competitive multiplayer, even if it was good.
Agree I used to value competitive but now I realize that came after the games were released, the most important thing is that the game is so much fun people want to come back to it, stop it with the competitive elitistic crap
Relic made Company of Heroes and Dawn of War. They definitely have a lot of experience making multiplayer RTS games. Unfortunately, they don't know how to make polished products.
And polish is what's needed for multiplayer competitive esports
I think you have a point including city builders/management games in the singleplayer rts category, even though I wouldn't have (wrongfully). However, I think you are overlooking a crucial aspect when it comes to RTS multiplayer success: outstanding singleplayer. AOE4 might be open for debate, but all the other 4 top e-sports RTS are also outstanding (if not top 5) singleplayer RTS games. Arguably, with the exception of the Starcraft games (and even that is debatable) these games left an impact on gaming history due to their singleplayer experiences first and the multiplayer and modding second. In my mind, there is no doubt that all of these games' multiplayer success was built on a massive singleplayer base. Although, unlike other successful singleplayer RTS games they had engines to support a competitive multiplayer or (in the case of Starcraft 2 and AOE4) were developed with that in mind. Based on this observation, speculate that none of the games you mentioned is gonna get anywhere near to saving multiplayer RTS.
Nevertheless, on a more positive note: The RTS fanbase is still massive, if you add up all the views that RTS get on youtube between oldies like C&C, Dawn of War, BAR, Battle for Middleearth, Supreme Commander, Warcraft 3, Starcraft 2, and even adjacent games like Total War - RTS still receives the interest it needs to support another e-sports success, but such a success needs to impress in all regards and better not be objectively worse than Starcraft 2 at everything. My super subjective hope is: it should be Warcraft 4. Because there is a tiny chance, a Warcraft sequel might attract the gigantic MOBA crowd.
BAR (beyond all reason) a small open source RTS has a far superior control scheme than any other RTS out there.
to the point that it has ruined all other RTS games for me.
the game itself isn't great (lack of matchmaking, match pacing, visuals...), but the control scheme is unmatched.
Command and Conquer: generals has an active e-sports scene today, if what small and C&C 3 was literally made to compete with starcraft 2 for E-sports
yup, Zero Hour still has tournies with thousands of dollars prize pools. Just shows the ignorance
c&c generals has 15 viewers on twitch right now btw
you can call anything active that has 1 guy left but it doesnt even come close to any of these
C&C3 esport was dead after a week xD
@@hoomodance Still has a comp sceeene for thousands when the comps happen. It's a small closed community.
Brood war has 150 viewers
@@JamboNessy not on AfreecaTV, which is by far the biggest platform to stream broodwar on. It's massive and korean streams constantly have 1000s of viewers, looking at twitch numbers isn't representative of the broodwar community whatsoever.
Grubby describing Blizzard being the douche that steal yo girl byt showing her she could have more and you're no longer enough is what we in the anime world call NTR and it's the perfect description. Hell, those guys even get away with it too just like Boby
So, on RTS, modernization of both controls *and* macro.
For instance, say there's a common wisdom that it's *ALWAYS* correct to keep building workers, or maybe it's ALWAYS correct to keep building workers until a certain amount (E.G. 2 workers per mineral patch, 3 per gas), you could set workers to auto-build *AND* rally them to resources with right click the way war3 priest autocasts heal, and they'll stop immediately upon the nexus/cc/hatchery detecting minerals * 2 + gas * 3 workers in the radius, or maybe there could be three building options--manual build, auto-build for resources in radius, and continuous auto-build. Same thing with every type of production building. Have 3 starports and want to just keep massing wraiths for w/e reason? Just set it to auto-build.
It won't take anything away--manual macro players that want more finely tuned control of what they build can still do that. But those that know they suck at macro and multitasking can opt into auto-building.
Next, obv. what SC2 did in terms of infinite control groups. Deathball gameplay? Sure. But again, someone with higher APM will be able to take advantage of that, exploit that, and split their units up to do more specialized things. Or you might have a deathball shock troops group (zealots/immortals) that you just attack move, while control grouping more specialized units.
Basically, the evolution of the RTS, IMO, isn't in dumbing it down, but rather, making it as trivially easy to transfer decisions in head to inputs in game. This will allow even lower level players to simply make more decisions.
And what kinds of decisions can those be? Well, you could take the warcraft 3 formula and add the element of single player (creeping, leveling heroes). You could put various sorts of different objectives around the map (contested resources, such as SC2's gold minerals), create rarer third types of resources used for something nifty to that particular map (maybe a market-like building that you can use some of that third resource to buy things typically unavailable in a regular map, such as high level mercenaries).
Basically, the next evolution of the RTS will be on how a developer puts more "it depends" decisions in the game that makes players think on their feet, while making those decisions as mechanically easy to make as possible.
Oh, and beyond that: a custom map editor that's as easy to use as possible--AND developer involvement WITH the community. If the devs want a thriving game, the devs need to actually invest into cultivating that community (see: "Hi, I'm Chris Wilson from Grinding Gear Games.").
I used to be against dumbed down mechanics but I've come around because you see it in mmos, fighting games, sc2, shooters, moba and I don't necessarily think "harder" is better. I think there' s a limit sure. It just kinda change where the skill gap is at.
harder is nice if it is intellectual rather than physical, imho.
Yeah, it can work. The QoL shifts the skill expression to out-strategizing, speed, and so on; if those are deep enough, it works. If they aren't, the control mechanics being tedious is a stop-gap to stop revealing the superficiality in the end-game loop
I have 2 more factors of why I think RTS might be declining.
1. We just lost most of RTS players to mobas, mostly LoL and Dota2.
I mean, we can see it from Grubby himself that he really likes to play a lot of Dota. Mobas are kinda like wc3, because of the hero and they still include a lot of strategic thinking, but they're easier to control, not as much brain focus power needed, and so most people who are not as capable rts players will play mobas instead. They can be more chill gameplay which many people prefer. Especially as the old RTS players nowadays work hard, they wanna relax in the evening, playing mobas. Back in the days when they played RTS, they were young and more competitive as they didn't have to work besides school.
2. Mobas are about teamplay (which is a big fun factor) and while RTS can have some team modes, they're mostly designed for 1v1 and multiplayer modes mostly are not as nice.
So maybe also the rise of being more easily able to communicate in high quality voice plays a role there. 15 years ago, many people's voice headsets were terrible and it reduced the fun playing in a team because of that.
nailed it.
mobas are intellectually challenging, they are just not physically challenging. That is literally why I stopped playing the times I did, I eventually didn't enjoy that part of the game.
A competitive RTS must not only to excel in its competitive aspects to be successful.
There needs to be a large enough player base lured in by fun, to be vetted for future competitive or even professional careers, and to provide the bulk of a viewer base who are sustaining the game's competitive scene.
If you look at AoE 2's current best, Hera, his story began as a casual campaign player. Now he just won an 80k tournament, and multiple others in the preceding years. As an other example, Fortnite spawned a scene with money flying around in ballparks very competitive with Counter Strike.
AoE2 is raw esports success fully carried by its community, it's great to see
I think RTS is suffering from creatively bankrupt developers.
Wheres the physics based RTS? I haven't see any game similar to Myth and that game is fantastic for singleplayer and multiplayer.
Or just a battle royale style RTS, like why the fuck not.
Every attempt to copy SC2 and WC3 will just fail spectacularly.
I agree with the lack of creativity among developers (which is likely due to very little financial investment in the genre). However, while I see several games trying to emulate Starcraft 2 multiplayer success I don't have a single game on my radar that takes inspiration from Warcraft 3. Am I overlooking something?
Has somebody who loves RTS and wants a good one to come out and be competitive, If I hear Sc2 Like again I'll scream, fuck no. That game blew chucks, it was the death blow that killed RTS.
Dawn of war 2 had esports. I got 3rd place in a Warcraft 3 tournament vs Ir0nclad and sMs_red. I had to live by legends of early WC3 lol. But I also placed 1st in Dawn of war 2 in the same tournament. 3D Rambo played his first WC3 tournament that day in Dallas, all of us Texan pros were there to help him get better! Team 3D swept that tournament for Counter Strike. I want to say it was called Killer LAN, but I’m old now lol.
There were more games that aspired to be competitive rts games. They just didn't succeed in it or never got a big esport scene. For Example Paraworld (not Palworld), World in Conflict, BattleForge or Supreme Commander. You could even argue for the Warhammer 40k Dawn of War series, Spell Force or Battle Realms. Also the C&C series is an absolute must on this list.
For the new games, they meight fall into the same trap as all the supposedly wow killers at that time. Only this time, these games are trying too hard to be like StarCraft 2 instead of having their own ideas.
“You can sit on a table” - Grubby, 2024
I think any new RTS will need to create a control feel somewhere between Brood War and SCII. Brood War is too painful and fighting the interface is not fun for anyone who didn't grow up playing it. SCII is too refined and creates un fun mechanics where macro is too easy and micro works on a razor's edge that is not fun in a casual setting.
I think RTS's could learn something from the design philosophy of MOBA's like Dota 2 where mechanically the skill cap is not nearly as high but the exploration space is massive and decision making at a strategic level is more important. I think throwing in dozens and dozens of units per race and not being overly concerned with every unit being viable competitively would be a good approach and having much more cyclical metas that aren't expected to be solved before the next round of changes could be a good direction to go in. A game space like that could allow for far more kinds of players where some dominate through mechanics, some succeed with innovative styles and build orders and others are strategically brilliant.
This is the way. It would be so fun to watch as well, like you have no idea what unit is going to be the next one trained, or maybe what ability it will have.
You hit a nail on the head. SCII is state-of-the-art RTS in so many ways but its design philosophy became anti-fun, low units hp to damage ratio with tons of high damage aoe abilities, epitome of which being widow mine and disruptor, looking away for one second and half of your army/workers are gone. Combine that with little to no comeback mechanics means anyone with less than 200 apm is not gonna have a good time. One thing dota 2 has refined over the years is the comeback mechanics by rewarding the players who are behind reasonably, allowing a wide enough window of errors without overdoing it and make every game a slugfest.
@@knightdtd "One thing dota 2 has refined over the years is the comeback mechanics"
And it feels good, because we are conditioned to think that in an rpg, you do get more xp and gold for defeating a tougher opponent.
Thoughts on Beyond all Reason? It's an RTS in the tradition of Supreme Commander and Total Annihilation.
I think it's still in beta, but most of the replayability is in the multiplayer. It doesn't have much of an esports scene, but the pro level matches are entertaining enough that I don't see why it couldn't develop one.
For me it is all about the actual control of the game/what i actually do with my hands on the Keyboard and mouse. Im in my late 30s now and ive been a gamer ever since, tried and had fun with almost every genre but i always come back to SC/WC after some time. Simply because NOTHING feels as good as those games when it comes to the the use of my mouse and keyboard. Yes the entry barrier is bigger than in other games, but i feel like people dont really know what they are missing. Nothing compares to it.
I'm probably one of the worst RTS players, yet I have always had a DEEP love for them. Single player or multi. You really have a great voice in this arena. I don't have any personal stake in this discussion but I find myself interested in what you have to say about it. You do good brotha
The issue with rts games is that the barrier of entry is higher than most other genres. If you wanna play something casual RTS is probably not the genre for you, since even just to move the units properly you have to spend a lot of time memorizing the command keys. Who wants to spend time playing a game that you have to learn how to move the camera properly for days when you could just hop into some shooter and start gaming in a few minutes? That's the biggest issue.
You can literally just install SC BW right now, start a game, build a spawning pool, morph some zerglings, and attack your opponent. WTF is this magical barrier of entry people have been talking about since SC2 beta? But when I want to play LoL, I first need to memorize 140 champions and their 4 spells, and how many spells interact with the spells of other heroes, to play the game normally. Because if I don't, I get cussed out. And LoL is massively popular, despite having a higher skill floor and a lower skill ceiling. Similarly, chess became massively popular. Despite losing 1vs1 being a massive ego crush, engine cheating being rampart, and basically all our games looking like complete clown shows compared to GM games.
No, the problem is that since SC BW was released, every dev has been desperate to remove the core gameplay mechanic of RTS from the game: mass clicking and multitasking.
@@Prometheus4096 that is patently false and you'd get curbstomped way quicker than in any moba if all you did was attack command. I can learn mobas while playing easily I cannot learn rts games on the fly.
@@aelix56Only if you're foolish enough to play against other players. The AI in RTS is definitely beatable with just attack commands.
@@CyborgSelZero I can play against people in mobas in non-ranked and not get curbstomped despite not knowing jack about the game. RTS don't give you that margin which is why I'm saying they have a highest barrier of entry. I don't play vs ai in shooters or mobas. You require extra knowledge to perform the basics of the game and people look at that and go "I ain't doing all that". Regardless of what fringe scenario you can portray to prove that RTS can be played by someone with 0 knowledge the fact of the matter is that you won't be able to enjoy it that much unless you're willing to, like you said, spend time learning and improving before jumping in with actual people.
I agree for people already familiar with RTS it seems easy, but I have watched some friends try these games and they take so much time just to build basic defenses and bases they eventually give up and go back to playing mobas and console games.
Frospunk is not an RTS, you don't get to make and control units, also there is no enemy units to fight. It's a city building and resource management game.
Grubby you ignore C&C but what about the Total Annihilation copies: Suppreme Commander with FAF, BAR and Zero-K, ashes of singularity etc
there are 30 viewers total watching supreme commander on twitch right now. the biggest tournament going on right now has a $2k price pool.
that's far from what grubby considers esports viable
@@hoomodance BAR has 550 active players. But I get the point. Thing is - these communities are alive.
@tomna7758 I mean, Heroes of Might and Magic 3 for example still has a solid community, yet can we consider it important enough to consider it anything else but a surviving one? Same applies for a lot of good games that are kinda forgotten today.
But to be fair, WC3's community is very small today compared to the past. Most WC3 fans don't even play the game anymore and just watch videos about it. If it wasn't a Blizzard's game with entertaining WC3 creators content like Grubby or WTII it would have faded away a while ago.
I was hoping to see Zero-K mentioned down here.
I played so much 1on1 in RA1 as a kid. That was a lot of fun :).
I'm really sad that the crew behind Spellforce 3 isn't pushing it more. It's a great RTS, sadly the multiplayer does need some work.
interesting video -- Wouldn't a resurgence relate to an increase in popularity. Back in the day RTS was a more popular game type with a higher percentage of gamers playing RTS games (yes - less to choose from then). The question is - Will the new games coming in 2024 increase the overall player base, in both absolute numbers and % of “gamers” engaging in the genre? and an overall interest in RTS games? If they do in a significant way that would constitute a resurgence. Unfortunately, it can result in an overall resurgence of the genre while at the same time reducing interest/commitment in each individual titles as the core players interested in RTS may shift focus across the newer titles. This will also split viewership which has a range of repercussions. So in order to reduce the spreading of fandom across more titles each new title would need to bring in a significant number of players/interest.
As for competitive e-sports it would be interesting to see a how a 2 v 2, or 3 v 3 game built to be balanced in those game mode would go (hard to do). RTS as a solo enterprise has always fascinated me - it could easily be a team orientated genre, but it established itself as a solo competitive genre early on and never moved away. I think that’s (the team aspect) part of the DOTA appeal for some people. Team leagues in RTS always seemed strange as they weren’t really teams in game. But having a team league where teams of 3 play single matches against each other along with 2 v’s 2 matches (or even archon v’s archon matches) would have a more Team v’s Team feel to it. There are a range of pros and cons to the “team” aspect of RTS and competitive RTS.
C&C Red Alert and Generals *towered* over Blizzard kiddie games in NA and Europe. SC1 only had massive traction in South Korea.
I really enjoyed WC3 casually, playing with friends and wathing pro on WCG back in the day. I believe this is the one brach of RTS that can be expanded, the armie + hero RTS.
Blizzard failed attemp to cash grab with reforged seems to put the WC3 players actually behind from where they really were.
hero based team play rts where a player is never knocked out. That would interest me.
Frostpunk had a player peak of 26k for two months but then struggled to hit 10k players. 4 mil players is off by 2 orders of magnitude
They sold about 1.8 million copies on Steam, then there are console sales on top of that... I think 4 mill is possible.
Fighting execution is not what i would call strategy. Give players choice of tactical choices, strategic choices and not force them to fight the game on execution level, otherwise sound players needlessly suffer from not being the best mechanically. And as you said, entry barrier is important as there is small minority of us who stick it through all the execution hurdles. There is no reason to dismiss the automation of RTS.
Worst thing about RTS is people think it stands for C&C not real time strategy.
Frost punk is a city-builder and has nothing to do with real-time strategy, and Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium wars Kane's wrath - Red alert 1, 2 and 3, still have sizeable communities that host tournaments. You might not like these games, but you should look into these communities if you want to make an assessment of RTS as a whole. These games are highly competitive and have a high skill ceiling. Omitting these games makes this assessment incomplete at best and inaccurate at worse.
I agree that there are not many high competitive RTS games, I think this is because there is not a high demand for this. The market will produce RTS games if the demand is there. I don't see that change any time soon, but maybe an Indie company that can make something surprising that would spark that demand.
I have strong doubts the genre can "recover" when new games coming out are still actively compared to games from nearly 30 years ago. Look at games trying to re-capture Quake. They get eaten alive.
By RTS I mean "classic RTS" like Age of Empires, StarCraft, Command&Conquer. Nowadays, so many games are labled "realtime strategy" that have very little in common, like city builders or games like Dune Spice Wars.
RTS does not need saving. Its going well. Not as well as when it peaked in the late 90s/early 2000s, but also not like during the dark ages around the early 2010s, where we had nothing bar StarCraft 2.
I don't think it will every reach the heights its once has, but I also don't think its necessary. Being so insanely popular also meant a lot of bad cashgrab games that made the genre look bad and contributed to its decline. But its back, its strong, even on a lower scale, it works well. AoE4 is the first big RTS in many years, but there a lots in the indie space, but are still doing well in their own regard. And that is totally fine in mine opinion. Going big can be a blessing and a curse. RTS has become a niche genre and I highly doubt anything can pull it out of that. Microsoft tries hard wie AoE4, which probably did not meet expecations. Even with the supposedly successfull (supposedly because I don't have any numbers) Xbox Version of AoE2 and 4, and with AoM:Retold coming to it aswell. There is a reason why Blizzard bascially abandoned RTS (except for maximizing profit) and EA does almost nothing with C&C. The investment required to make a big RTS does not pay off. Smaller scale developers can still make great games, without breaking the bank. And I think that is fine.
If I look at all the big modern PC esports, I get a list somewhat consisting of: League of Legends, Dota2, Fortnite(?), Apex legends, Valorant, Counter Strike. And probably some more. All these games are somewhat free to play, are team based, and generally dont involve killing your opponent direcly. Like Valorant and CS you need to place bombs. LoL and Dota you are looking to level up and destroy the nexus. Obviously it gets a bit more complex when you look at the individual games.
The point that I am trying to get at is that traditional RTS games dont have any of this. And as of now I dont know any attempts to move RTS closer to modern esports. Maybe the Stormgate 3v3 mode has a chance. It will be FTP, team based, and probably has objectives other than killing your opponent because Frostgiant has stated that they dont want a player to be out of the game when he/she dies. I am all for trying new things, and here is my hope that Stormgate is Trojan Horsing a next gen esports RTS experience into an somewhat ancient 1v1 RTS.
The Company of Heroes 2 scene is there, so much so that when the devs turned a blind eye to it people modded it for competitive gameplay. Dawn of war Series I felt was also in this list, both I would list as Mediums. Battlefleet gothic 1 &2 , really wanted to break into the esports thing as well but just fumbled the ball , mostly due to balancing and match making issues , ontop of listening to the loudest 1% that weren't good at the game. There were attempts, just a lot of failed attempts of implementing good balance multiplayer.
Stormgate probably has the best chance, but i dont think it will be there in 2024. I agree that its becoming "too easy" to play rts, when i play and really enjoy rts its because with the game i can have a lot of fun, immerse myself in the game and have so much to improve on that it will keep me going for life.
At the end of the day, i want to play a game that makes me forget i exist in reality
According to FG Dev estimates, EA this year and Release 1year anno EA means we're probably 18-21 months out from full SG release, so 2025
The guy in chat who said Valve should make a DotA RTS... I dont know if thats the dumbest or the most genius thing I've ever heard..
Im born in 1981 i play rts games since their beginning (Dune 2). I love the competitive scene like Sc 2 had. I played Sc 2 every day 8 hours (im Dia 1). If you make a new RTS it has to be better than SC 2 ! I dont see that in Stormgate so far (my big hope). Because for exampsle look at the graphics at stormgate. In no way it matches SC 2. I know its Alpha but this cant be the ambition if you want the Throne of RTS!
Seems like a similar argument to making fighting games easier. Older players don't generally like it but doing so certainly brings in a new audience. Not sure how I feel about it to be honest, just making an observation
I just want a re-release of C&C Generals and Battle for Middle Earth 2 with functioning matchmaking.
i enjoy watching it sometimes, but what makes me not really play warcraft is the keybinding, its very complicated to keybind and confusing, because you need to keybind alot of things if you want to play the game decently, i wish they would update the keybind settings so its less confusing and less time consuming to keybind the buildings, champions, troops etc.
??? Bruh they literally do
search w3champions
pfff, you need literally one txt file to put in folder
It could be like DOTA2 where the game remembers every unit from previous game. So if you save War Mill to CTRL+6, War Mill could stay on 6
Warcraft 3 wasn't one of the best games of all time because of the Multiplayer. That was an added bonus, but it wasn't why people bought the game. They bought it because the campaign and story were extremely well done and fun to play.
Instead of making a game extremely fun first, they instead throw people to the wolves where many people don't want as their first experience. Making a game "Easy" doesn't make it casual. Making it fun as fuck without throwing them against someone twice as good as them immediately does.
There was a reason "They Are Billions" sold extremely well. Making RTS multiplayer competitive as the only focus is a ridiculous mistake.
I don't know if you ever heard of GiantGrantGames. He is the Starcraft II (mostly) PvE / community guy that started out by doing deathless runs on the campaign. He also did Warcraft III deathless.
He made a very interesting video a year or so ago about what the old RTS had and new RTS copycats are lacking. While you are on the other side of the community with the PvP focus, you might find his view very interesting.
zero space looks good, age of mythology remake looks amazing and there are whispers regarding the release of frostpunk 2 and homeworld 3
I remember the first time i played wc3, before every worker spawn from their building, you could just right click the wood or the mine and they move into said resource to gather it... Differently from sc, not talking sc2, im talking the original and broodwar, you do the same rally point before the worker appear and they will move into the location, only thing is... If its a mineral or gas, they are just going to stand there doing nothing. What grubby says is true, rts genre has been improved.
I'll bet a lot of people don't remember that, before the Conquerers expansion, vils in AoE II didn't auto collect resources after constructing a building. Every time you built a mining camp or lumber camp you had to manually command the vils to collect. Probably not what I want to be focusing on when there are knights, archers and spearmen running amok on a giant battlefield.
@@EmperorSigismund i never played AoE, was kind of boring for me
To be fair Frostpunk is a city builder.
Command and conqure generals had a strong esports scene around 2005ish era im pretty sure
i want warcraft 4 with same mechanics!
that, set a 1000 years in a post-apocalyptic future, resetting the lore and grounding the story in "reality" rather than mighty gods. Yes, the pandas are extinct.
I want the C&C experience, thankfully I have Tempest Rising and D.O.R.F. to look forward to.
Frostpunk is a city builder
I started Sc2 last year and im having a blast. Gameplay is so smooth.
I love RTSs, or at least I want to love them. For me I always played them for the campaigns and then transitioned to some casual/competitive multiplayer afterwards.... but as time has gone on and I've gotten older and busier it's been harder and harder to maintain the skills required to play RTSs in a competitive fashion. I feel like if I really wanted to play an RTS and enjoy it competitively I'd have to play nothing but that RTS.
It just takes too much investment where I could pick up any RPG or shooter and have fun with it after not playing either for weeks or months. Just kinda how I see it. AoE4 was the best rts I've played since DoW2 and I just don't feel like i have the time to really play it at a level I'm comfortable or satisfied with.
Grubby, I think you would appreciate studying the entire family of total annihilation games because the source code was open to all to use and as a result many iterations of the game have been produced. Some versions practically play themselves they are so automated, a popular version is BAR and the interface is probably the best interface an RTS has ever had with unit control.
I personally think the secret success to a good RTS is artificial constraints. Broodwar had only 12 units at a time could be selected. WC3 had the upkeep system. Without such constraints every rts feels the same and i think developers just end up recreating the same mechanics over and over.
100% on the BAR control scheme. Microing large groups of units has never felt so good.
I think it's extremely difficult to make the game accessible to new players AND E-sports ready, they are often at ends. Like you said, as you flatten the mechanical and strategic depth the game loses e-sports appeal, but that's often what enables newer players to join and play the game. That being said, every upcoming RTS needs to rip off all the QoL control improvements that Beyond All Reason has. It's unreal how much more accessible RTS becomes with things like Line Drag, Repeat, Set Target, etc. I think these types of enhancements better enable the player to execute a strategy in real time, lowering the mechanical burden but maintaining the strategic.
I feel like WC3 is the perfect example of those two interests unified, I'm not sure how they did it and others didn't. Probably because of map editor (ergo the community)
@@GrubbyTalks I feel like a lot of it comes down to control and UI. Modern RTS feel exactly the same as they did 20 years ago, and they are all trying to replicate SC/AoE. I haven't had enough time with Stormgate to have a legitimate opinion of it, but my first reaction was that it looked like a League graphics recreation of SC2.
I feel like RTS controls and UX are the biggest detractors for new players in a lot of cases. In teaching new RTS players how to play BAR, it's absurd how much knowledge/kill you don't realize you've built up over decades of playing RTS. You need the UI and controls that are better updated / more fluid imo.
While CNC3 Esports never took off, EA did dump quite a bit of money into trying. They had that whole hokey BattleCast Prime program which they kept around for at least a year or so.
I think no game developer should put Balance in the first place; gameplay is the major stuff, and the most popular game will always be the new type of game; that's a fact and a good thing. RTS has declined from its peak but still has a decent fanbase, just like any other kind of popular genre. (arena shooters, fighting games, mmorpg,etc.)
From what i've played so far, stormgate definitely feels the best to play. it isnt really innovating the space, but the mix of sc2 micro and wc3 one sec of inattention doesnt lose you the game. Its the one I wanted to keep coming back to and dabble a little more.
I'm not sure Godsworn qualifies as a "Sim RTS". It feels like a classic RTS except that your workers are automatically produced and overall economy and building micromanagement is streamlined. You still control your army and expand and macro in all the same ways as a normal RTS.
I really appreciate Grubbys videos like this
EA did a big push for CNC3 back in the day. I guess it comes down to definition.
amazing talk. yeah only blizzard created RTS esports genre and RTS esports was the beginning of livestreaming esports (would have existed without it, but sc1 was the massive first mover)
I play a lot of Stormgate beta and I enjoy it, but game is clearly unfinished, so it simply can't "save" classic RTS esport genre in 2024, but in 2025 or 2026? Maybe yes!