I disagree with this premise. I think games like age of empires and StarCraft had mass appeal and success. They brought in audiences who don’t normally like games, and broadly were well received by young, old, and different genders. Especially age of empires 2.
Modern RTS games are just (mostly) sloppy, unfinished, cashgrabs with no vision. They suffer the most from the transition to 3d as well. If a major studio actually put work and time into a polished, 2d, isometric, RTS that wasn’t solely focused on being an esport, I think there is a major vacuum for them to fill.
That doesn’t really contradict their premise about making modern RTS. StarCraft and Age of Empires 2 are ancient at this point. An entire generation of kids has grown up since they came out.
I don’t think the fact that you could make a successful mainstream RTS way back then really says much about whether you could make one in 2024.
I mean, StarCraft was mentioned in the article. He just doesn’t think RTS is big enough for AAA dev companies when they’re all trying to sell tens of millions of games
That’s not to say RTSes can never be any kind of hit: StarCraft 2 sold many millions of copies, Bruno noted, and Crate Entertainment only needs to sell a million to make “an OK return,” he said. The series has also been an esports phenomenon. But for a company like Blizzard, he doesn’t think that’s enough anymore, which is why the developer stopped making new RTSes, or at least seems to have for now.
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To Tiberian Sun and StarCraft were my obsession for years. SC2 was pretty awesome, but I would not trust Blizzard to make another good RTS at this point.
How about ex-Blzzard people? Stormgate is coming.
Are we going to pretend Age of Empires 4 doesn’t exist? The last expansion outsold every single one from AoE2.
I didn’t realize that it sold so well! That’s good to hear it is successful. I’m not over the moon with the game, but I did get 30 hours or so out of it, and don’t think it’s bad at all. My biggest annoyance was that it felt too similar to AOE 2, which I saw as the superior game at launch. Still, that’s a bit of bias from an old gamer, lol. I think it’s fun!
The game had a really rough launch, I’m not surprised you got that impression if you played it back then.
I’d give it another shot, everything from gameplay to graphics has been overhauled since.
According to steamDB AoE IV has between 1.27 and 2.5 million owners. That is a good number, but not mainstream. At the very least not mainstream in the definition used in the article.
I mean, RTS is never going to be that kind of mainstream again, it’s too complicated and can’t be monetized in the way that something like a shooter can.
My apologies. You weren’t arguing against the articles premise, but against the premise that there are no good current RTS games. Ignore my blabering.
Modern RTS games are just (mostly) sloppy, unfinished, cashgrabs with no vision.
As were many classic RTS games. I fondly remember Machines, a fully 3D example from the late 90s. I recently noticed the CD case describes it as “3D Real-Time Startegy.”
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Okay so the lesson to learn from the mainstream success of StarCraft is to put sexy submissive and breedable murderous bugs in your game
The problem with modern RTS games is that developers don’t really make proper RTS games. You don’t see C&C or SC anymore, instead you get a mixture of tactical missions, RPG levelling and other shit. I don’t want to play stealth infiltration missions and level up my hero, that’s not RTS.
I bought the C&C collection because I loved it when I was younger. EA fucked up C&C3 with an update that turned it into a constant zerg rush by the AI and Red Alert 3 has the same bullshit AND a shitty AI co-commander blowing through resources while doing fuck all. There’s no strategy, just frantic clicking and attack alerts.
Yup, if I want to level up my units, I’ll research upgrades for my units. That requires resources, not combat. I honestly never saw the point of a mechanic or medic in C&C, because if I won a battle, I would usually go on to destroy their infra, not heal up to go again.
Starcraft got this right.
One thing that may be interesting here is a “drill” feature, where you lock up a unit for some time and expend some resources to get a higher tier unit. That way you can spam units early on and replace them later for cheaper, but the total cost would be higher than building that unit initially.
Wasn’t that going on as far back as WC3? If I wanted an RPG I would have bought one.
Yeah, that’s why it’s not on my list. The first two games were better.
Warzone 2100 did the RPG elements as much as was needed in a RTS. Sure individual units gained XP,.and they carried over from one mission to the next. You could also recycle units to upgrade their chassis. That was it. You could also just churn out basic troops and just throw away armies if you wanted.
The RTS genre will never be mainstream
StarCraft: exists
Lmao what the fuck is this guy even talking about
Starcraft hasn’t been mainstream for over a decade.
Which one? Sc1 is still a mainstream game in Korea played religiously. Sc2 on the other hand is losing players since it didn’t hook people the same way (impossible to do, people only have one childhood to waste nostalgia on). That’s understandable though since there hasn’t been new content for it for a long time.
And then you find out that a premium mount in WoW made more money than the entirety of Wings of Liberty and you kinda understand why they haven’t made a new one.
For real - I’m visiting Seoul right now and I’ve popped into a couple of Internet cafes just to see what’s what. Tons of people still play SC1. There are, like, championships here for SC1, and they seem to have quite a decently large following.
I’d actually be OK with a SC game that has tons of cosmetic paid DLC. Pump money into the game to keep them developing it, and add some visual variety on the map.i stead of fighting against 3 Teran teams that all look the same, you’d have 1 team that looks like zombies or a football team or other wacky shit.
There are literally 3 free2play RTSes based on Blizzard dev studios / players etc doing exactly that.
Sure, it’s popular in one country, that doesn’t mske it mainstream. Fortnite or Minecraft are mainstream games. There’s no RTS that’s even close to the popularity of those games.
Grandpa…
Battle for Middle Earth was my favourite game ever probably or at least among top 3. Honestly between the 4x warhammer total war and rts bfme I think bfme was slightly more fun.
It’s a real shame the genre is so forgotten.
RTS is more organic genre without incessant thinking about numbers and save scumming while 4x always feels like Math.
Every game session of RTS game is slightly different even with the same map and enemy parameters providing for a way more replayability value and unpredictable chaos that you need to manage in real time. It’s much more engaging this way.
It’s still about numbers under the hood but more organic while 4x feels like an excel spreadsheet sometimes. There are less solutions to victory, sometimes even only one proper, predetermined before playing and that’s boring.
Another gem was Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War: Dark Crusade. They made 2 sequels but none captured the gameplay of the first one. For some unknown reason they scrapped everything what made the original good in the second game, making it completely different. The third one was an attempt to go back to the mechanics of the first one but it was mediocre.
And you cannot play it anymore due to the BS drm crap. I don’t need a remake, just let me play it somehow
Games of that era are also just to big to easily pirate. A SNES ROM? Ezpz. But a full DVD game? Not without torrenting
I think this is all you need nowadays, it’s one click install I think. https://www.moddb.com/mods/battle-for-middle-earth-patch-222/downloads/patch-222
Hell, I will give it a go myself tomorrow
Dang, thank you!
Yw yw have fun (hopefully it works, haven’t checked myself yet)
I played it quite recently I think the community has solved that problem, even online iirc it worked. Don’t remember the links though. It’s still fun and a good escape when warhammer gets stale.
I do remember it was bashed for drm on release though. I also remember these things called no-dvd cracks you pulled form the shady websites with disgusting porn ads to not have to have the disc in your drive at all times. Also avast antivirus shenanigans. I wouldn’t say it was good old times but it all had certain flavour though I probably wouldn’t want to go back in time haha.
Gaming is generally in an amazing place now with an exception of few things lost along the way one of which is aaa RTS and another early Bethesda rpg genre, they totally changed their games starting with oblivion.
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C&C was mainstream. Fuck you EA.
I think someone should reboot the Dune RTS game from like 30 years ago. I played it as a kid on my Sega Genesis, and right now it’s a ripe time to do it. Interesting parts:
- feels like C&C, but with spice worms
- lots of factions, but could stick to three: Atreides, Harkonnen, Corrino/Emperor (optionally add the Fremen as a fourth)
- cool, unique tech and setting
So, here’s what I suggest:
- copy C&C gameplay with updated graphics, and swap units appropriately
- add spice worms as a “random” event based on greed (keeps stronger players in check)
- balance like in Starcraft - harkonnen are like Zerg, corrino/empire are like protoss, and atreides are like Terran; Fremen faction could work like Zerg, in which case harkonnen works more like Terran
I think that could sell well.
Have you tried the new one?
Huh, it actually exists! That said, from one of the reviews:
Feels like a tablet or phone game. Your PC will be insulted. This is one of those games that make you think you played it ten years ago. Actually 30 years ago, Dune II back in 1992 was a better game and was groundbreaking at the time. This is not on any level. 5 units types per faction, that’s it. No ground vehicles to speak of that you can control.
I’ll probably be disappointed.
That review is bullshit. It’s not going to tax your machine, but that’s a good thing. The unit type thing is also missing that not the entire game takes place on the battlefield, there’s multiple layers to it and you almost never win through pure domination.
EDIT: Also, ground vehicles? This is Dune, you can’t cross sand in a vehicle, and they couldn’t go up cliffs. No, instead you airdrop, which is way more flexible.
K, I’ll watch some gameplay footage then.
For a moment, I was swapping 4X and RTS in my head, making me absolutely agree that it’ll never be mainstream.
Yeah, I don’t know enough about RTS games to make a claim, but I’d like to think games like Civilization are well known enough to make them mainstream.
Unless I’m missing something new in later civs, the civilization series is missing the “real tine” part. Unless we’re talking about the fact that it takes place during real time periods. Hah.
Fair enough.
Rts is mainstream, it’s called dota and league.
Those are bastard offspring of rts
Those are not the kind of RTS I want to play…
Really shortsighted view of it. Just because you make a new RTS that is more generally appealing is not going to change the existence of those that preceded it or their fanbase.
Look at every mainstream game and youll easily see why RTS games could never go mainstream. They’re all the same, like the wall of Buzz Lightyears in Toy Story. Over the shoulder camera, action adventure. Batman, God of War, Resident Evil, the list goes on. None of these were mainstream games until they all started looking and feeling the same.
Oh yeah God of War did horribly on PS2.
Wait no, it did phenomenally.
Sales aren’t a good metric of determining whether something is mainstream or not. Notably, Anthem had over $100 million in sales. I wouldn’t exactly consider Anthem to be a mainstream game.
I honestly didn’t know that sales figure for Anthem, that’s gross. They stole peoples’ money. That said, Anthem is an exceptional outlier. The difference between God of War and Anthem is that people play and played God of War.
What metric would you approve of? Awards? It got a bunch of Game of the Years
