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Comment by ericmcer | Hacker News Reader

All the RTS games are underplayed nowadays. Starcraft 2 is maybe the most active still and has been all but abandoned by Blizzard.

A good RTS has an extremely harsh learning curve and is not super monetizable. Someone would have to rethink the genre: make it easier for casual players and figure out how to get the addicting money making patterns in. Otherwise big companies are gonna have no interest.

Sucks, I love Starcraft 2, but it is legitimately the most mentally demanding game I have ever played. Sometimes I procrastinate getting into a match because 1v1 is so stressful. I totally get why it has limited appeal.

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The spiritual successor of Starcraft is Stormgate. I cannot comment on it, I have no idea how good it is. AFAIK it is multiplayer only. I played Dune II, Warcraft II, C&C, Red Alert, Starcraft (didn't like, I never understood the hype), Dark Reign, Total Annihilation, Warcraft III as kid, but... only single player (at various difficulties). That is just how games were generally played in the 90s. I do remember using a null modem cable at some point, but IIRC was only to play Doom and Duke3d.

I believe the RTS genre at a whole got superseded by the MOBA genre (with DotA and LoL). A genre I tried once (HotS) and was terrible at. If you're shit and you're not improving (I didn't enjoy it either, I felt forced to do it for a reward in another game), stop trying. I never tried any other MOBA, except maybe a touchscreen one, Warcraft Rumble? Either way, I got burned by Hearthstone Mercs and fell once more in the trap with Rumble. After Blizzard announced removed of addons from combat, I've finally said goodbye to the Warcraft franchise and Blizzard in general.

There's one game I really do like which has a kind of RTS with map feeling to it: Total War: Warhammer series (though I laud their BS with DLCs and multiple game versions). I suppose the whole Total War series is as good, I just like the Warhammer universe. The other day, Settlers II was discussed on here, including a FOSS clone. Settlers II is also a game I liked (III not so much though artwork was nice, never played the orig.). Supposedly it isn't RTS, tho I am pretty sure back then it was called RTS.

> The spiritual successor of Starcraft is Stormgate

This was their claim, but it did not pan out in reality. It flopped on launch, hard. Peak player count since launch has been less than 100, and is currently hovering around 25.

It was really proof that gameplay often takes a back seat to visual identity, ESPECIALLY if the gameplay is extremely derivative, which this was. They had a massive amount of goodwill from fans of the genre, but when they started sharing screenshots it deflated fast - its not a 2025 game, its a 2010 clone of a popular 2005 game. Its nigh impossible to make a spiritual successor to genre defining games in WC3 and SC2 - too many things need to go perfect.

It had a better chance if it could find its own voice, but it ended up feeling like a direct to home video sequel to a popular movie

Huh the gameplay was ass? The units weren't interesting, the strategies derivative, the flow bad, the balance off, not even half finished campaign and 0 goodwill from kickstarters after rugpulling content that was promised and charging them for it

The sign for me was when the art style was announced. The last thing in the world I want from a modern RTS is Fortnite-style animation targeted towards tweens.

I agree, I think MOBAs superceded the "real time" part of RTS's, while the more turn based Civ/4x, Total War series strategy type games ended up taking a lot of the base building part. Having them both together was just straight up difficult and incredibly intense, like the game itself demanded you be on adderall because your attention cannot wane for a single moment.

The better I got at competitive RTS's the less interesting the game got for me, it just kinda of felt like chess where there was only going to be one or two interesting interactions in the game if played well, otherwise its just a game of who makes a mistake too early.

Teamfight Tactics and Autochess are interesting newer entries though, allowing time to strategize and adding a lot of randomness to the games, where you can't just play one build. Even then though, as these games get more and more explored, "optimal" strategy gets eventually discovered and the game devs especially in TFT are in a race to try to keep things high variance but also seem fair - its definitely a difficult job!

> The better I got at competitive RTS's the less interesting the game got for me, it just kinda of felt like chess where there was only going to be one or two interesting interactions in the game if played well, otherwise its just a game of who makes a mistake too early.

I feel the exact same way. The ELO system saves you from getting steamrolled if you’re a casual player but improving just means the game becomes formulaic to the point of no longer being fun. Stronghold 2 was kind of interesting in that it was an unranked lobby with good variation in player ability and team-oriented maps. Most players knew the basic economic and combat metas, but you’d often end up in situations where one of your teammates dropped out on a 3 vs 3 and you’d still win.

Non-DotA style RTSes fell to the same trap that all long-established/entrenched products/franchises/entities/collectives do:

Thinking that only their way is always right and there's no room for change.

Until somebody comes and builds something different that fucks their world upside down.

Suggestions for improvement and ease of use on their forums got shot down on their forums by the resident shitters like on every other community.

Now nobody cares about that genre, except those of us who grew up on it.

It had its time, but its just not accessible to people - shooters which require as much attention, mechanical skill and perseverance but at least matches are relatively quick and there's a team element. Starcraft can be just grind grind grind all of your openers and don't stop, don't sleep, don't eat, just queue

With a few UI conveniences StarCraft 2 could have been just as accessible to newer players as League of Legends.

World in Conflict was an interesting take on making RTS easier for casuals. Basically took the resource gathering part out of it. You got a constant drip of points you could spend on units instead.

Potentially that simplification hurts the genre too much though because then you don't have hardcore players sticking with it for years and years.

Maybe a game could have that as a "simple mode" that players can opt in to.

The potential addictive money making pattern is the same as other games imo. Skins. The units being smaller mean the developer is probably going to have to go to more effort to shove them in to peoples faces. Maybe a screen before/after the match where all the players units in their skins can be clear seen in a more zoomed in manner. Have them marching around the border of the end scoresheet or doing a little dance while waiting for players to load.

Every time someone tries to re-think the genre they make it worse. Supreme Commander (and Forged Alliance) were near-perfect games, but SupCom 2 tried to simpify the game to appeal to console players and ruined it completely. Dawn of War 2, although not to everyone's taste, was in my view the peak of the series. For the third install they tried to simplify the game and bring it closer to a MOBA and it was an incredible flop.

In my view, if a develop MUST make the game more accessible, they should do so with alternate modes while still maintaining a strong competitive 1v1, 2v2 and 4v4 mode with the steep learning curve and competitive nature. Anything else is a betrayal of the genre.

StarCraft I still has a large community. And China has a giant WarCraft III community.

I think the problem is simply that for a large part of the playerbase, increasing your APM is directly correlated with increasing your win rate/ranking.

And frankly, that's not fun for a lot of people.

I don't want to win by clicking and mashing hotkeys like a schizophrenic on speed.

I don't think this is true. Granted, last time I tried to get good at an RTS was toward the end of the Brood War era but the established wisdom at that time was very clear that hour-for-hour, time spent practicing resource management was much more effective than time spent practicing clicking quickly.

Yes, really good players click fast, but they also have impeccable resource management. The group I played with did run the obvious experiment: the best one of us was forced to play against the rest (one at a time) with an artificial click frequency limit. He felt like his abilities were greatly reduced, but he still beat everyone else quite easily.

Yeah, I played a lot of StarCraft 2. By myself, 2v2 with a really talented friend and 3v3 with two other friends that were total beginners that I could beat 1v2.

At the bottom to upper mid level all you need to win is to figure out the macro game of building construction while also getting enough workers and units. With enough of that no micro is needed, just attack-moving into the enemy is more than enough.

Then at the upper mid level you're going to run into people who often don't build as effectively but they'll micro every unit or they'll be constantly doing raids when you don't expect it, scouting better than you and/or just understanding which units are better vs which so as to counter you.

From that point on it becomes much more of an effort to play the game because then you need to become better in all of those fields, while also becoming faster. But to be honest that point is probably 2/3rd's up the tree of all the people playing.

When people complain about APM in an RTS like StarCraft, they’re really not complaining about the spam clicking done by players at the pro level. They’re talking about multitasking which is an essential skill at all levels of the game.

Not even at the lowest rankings are you permitted to ignore what your opponent is doing and focus on building workers and base facilities. StarCraft is infamous for the ability of anyone to sacrifice their economy to perform an early rush attack (most infamously with a ton of early zerglings).

To combat early rush attacks you need to be able to multitask: send out early scouts to see what your opponent is doing, if they have any hidden building on the map, how many workers they have, etc. You need to be able to do this while building your own workers, base facilities, and units for defence. This is the multitasking that so many struggle with and it’s required to be able to play at the most basic level!

Optimally queueing SCVs and marines and supply depots requires an APM of 11 or so in the early stages of a Brood War game on the fastest setting. Add a couple more APM for scouting, and we'ree still not talking crazy levels of multitasking.

Dealing with your opponent is a fact of every strategy game!

And yet if you watch low level players they’ll be fine with that until a bunch of zerglings show up at their base and then they panic trying to micro marines and repair bunkers while their minerals shoot up to 1000 and then they have no units and lose.

Keeping a scouting SCV alive in your opponent’s base while building more SCVs at home, building more barracks, building supply depots, killing the enemy scouting worker, and actually reading and correctly interpreting what your opponent is doing is non-trivial.

Perhaps a more 'casual' in the RTS genre, but AoE2 is still going very strong.

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