Comment by freddie_mercury | Hacker News Reader

Comment by freddie_mercury | Hacker News Reader

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freddie_mercury

There have been tons of analyses written on why RTS games have become less popular. If you're curious to read some, it should be pretty easy to google up. But the general theory is that RTS has lots of subsystems and very few people like all the subsystems in a single game, so the player base fragmented as gaming evolved. Tower defense games took the people who liked the base building part of RTSes. Slower-paced strategy games (Crusader Kings, Total War) took the people who liked deeper strategy. MOBAs took people who liked the micro.

> I think there’s room for a middle ground, a game that has more complex strategies like RTS’s do, but with casual play like a moba. We’ll see...

One problem is that RTS genre is a bit stuck. It is hard to pull in new players given all the other genres I just mentioned. And old RTS players "like what they like". You can see this in new RTS games that try something new like Tooth & Tail. It has a lot of negative reviews from RTS players saying things like "No micro?!? This isn't a real RTS!" Even though the lack of micro is specifically to try to draw in new players.

The RTS genre isn't really stuck - it's dead. Blizzard killed it. Studios left the genre when SC2 came out because at the time it was launched, SC:BW was, literally, e-sports. Power user players sought legitimacy for their games, hoping it would rise up to occupy that position, in the form of punishing, unfun mechanics. The result was that for a 4 year period prior to the release of SC2, games patched themselves to death to cater to the complaints of competitive players, players who promptly dropped the games they tailored to themselves for SC2.

Following SC2's announcement, RTS games almost stopped being developed entirely - no studio wanted to compete with blizzard's release. Unfortunately, Blizzard created a game which had very little of the UMS lobby scene, and very little of the captivating visual spectacle of SC:BW.

Blizzard's response to the decline of SC2 was made very clear very early; they didn't see the point in investing further in the genre when Hearthstone and WoW both featured recurring revenue and SC:BW had it's popularity owed to recurring fan based content at a set upfront price.

> You can see this in new RTS games that try something new like Tooth & Tail. It has a lot of negative reviews from RTS players saying things like "No micro?!? This isn't a real RTS!" Even though the lack of micro is specifically to try to draw in new players.

Well it's rated Very Positive on steam, for what it's worth.

It's definitely far from a standard RTS, though, with the way you have a single avatar character that runs around to personally provide vision and perform all actions.

Interesting, I hadn't seen that reasoning before - that each vertical within the general-purpose RTS gameplay eventually split out into its own genre, if you will.

I suppose it makes sense, but makes me a bit sad as I feel reconciling the strategic value in one to complement another was the magic - resources, units, and towns only have value insofar as they enhance your strategic execution. I could never get into Civilization or Rollercoaster Tycoon where it felt (to me) like building just for the sake of building or following how someone else defines "good".

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