Is this the start of a new rebirth for RTS games?

[Alfa]

First off, for the first time after 1½ decade, is great to see RTS games coming back.

Although there were a few games that tried during 2010's-2019 (Like Generals 2 and End Of Nations), and some didn't catch a lot of attention. But the RTS community is still going strong.

Is great to see new RTS games, although is nowhere near SC levels of everything, but we should appreciate the ideas and things that the smaller devs try, even though is a pre-alpha.

Pathfinding will always be a big topic, but hopefully it will be improved as time comes.

[Silvertongued Devil]

As much as I'd want them to, I don't think they'll ever get much bigger than they currently are. To do that they'd need to catch the casual player's eye - and right now the competition for that is for RTS-"lite" games like MOBAs. Hard to compete with League and DotA2 and their established communities, after all.

That said we do have a niche carved out and we've got some decent entries. Ashes of the Singularity, Beyond All Reason, Dune: Spice Wars, Age of Empires... Technically CoH3, but that seems to have gone rather badly.

It's all a little messy, really - but I'm fairly content with us having a niche interest. Sure we're not the biggest market anymore (if we ever were) but we exist and we're still apparently moderately profitable.

[Doko]

I wouldn't say so just yet. We've still got to see how this game pans out once it is out in the wild publicly, and then we need to see how the other RTS releases fare (like DORF and Stormgate).

I feel like the only way this genre could ever come back strong and healthy, is if it aims for the casual audience, not the ultra competitive (which will always be a smaller pool of players, and that's not even an opinion, that's just how the world works).

[jonoliveira12]

RTS has been coming back for years now.
They are just casual games, now. No more esports sensations, but there arev tons of good casual RTS around, from the past few years, and some really good remasters.

[Cat]

RTS is always a thing. It's just not as big as other genres.

[Jaris B.]

Originally posted by Silvertongued Devil:

As much as I'd want them to, I don't think they'll ever get much bigger than they currently are. To do that they'd need to catch the casual player's eye - and right now the competition for that is for RTS-"lite" games like MOBAs. Hard to compete with League and DotA2 and their established communities, after all.

lol
I don't think there is a less casual gaming audience than MOBA players. There are the very stereotype of a "sweaty" gamer.

No, the casual audience for RTS is in the singleplayer section. A massive subgroup of the community that has been neglected by RTS devs for long over a decade.

Tempest Rising is very smart to promise a 30 mission campaign right out of the gate. When was the last time someone has done that in the RTS space?

[G0ll0]

Yes, we have seen an increase interest in RTS, the problem is the rts focus, we all know that red alert 3 failed because of this, esports RTS games dont have player retention how you make RTS players to keep playing? Total war games have the answer, you will have thousands of single player hours on those games, in RTS few games provides this experience, Rise of nations and DOW dark crusade, I'd they later add a conquest the world campaign and they add coop and good IA this will retain a huge amount of players for years, that or use the age2 model that they release campaign DLC constantly... otherwise, people will play the
linear campaign and just leave.

[Doko]

Originally posted by Tsuda Tumiko:

Yes, we have seen an increase interest in RTS, the problem is the rts focus, we all know that red alert 3 failed because of this, esports RTS games dont have player retention how you make RTS players to keep playing? Total war games have the answer, you will have thousands of single player hours on those games, in RTS few games provides this experience, Rise of nations and DOW dark crusade, I'd they later add a conquest the world campaign and they add coop and good IA this will retain a huge amount of players for years.

The main goal at this moment should be devs capturing their audiences on the spot, rather than trying to capture both the casual and the hardcore PVP, because at some point we will end up seeing the usual shift of focus going towards the loudest (and smallest) voices, which in turn is going to end up with a net loss of general audience retention, and for an RTS this early in?, that's a death knell.

[G0ll0]

I just checked DOW souls storm numbers, that game is very old with no patches or any remaster, and it has, 1.2k players, more than some new RTS, I am pretty sure that is because of its campaign model and mod support. It has more players than iron harvest and cross fire legion together... Even older expansion dark crusade have more players lol, this clearly shows that after game is released devs should find ways to keep casuals and semi comp players playing, back in the day DOW1 had 3 expansion and they added a lot of races/campaigns, today babies will be crying not to add content for the sake of balance/eSports that none cares, this is a clear example on how RTS should be made and return to its roots which was fun it was never about twitch views or huge tournaments.

[Doko]

Originally posted by Tsuda Tumiko:

I just checked DOW souls storm numbers, that game is very old with no patches or any remaster, and it has, 1.2k players, more than some new RTS, I am pretty sure that is because of its campaign model and mod support. It has more players than iron harvest and cross fire legion together... Even older expansion dark crusade have more players lol, this clearly shows that after game is released devs should find ways to keep casuals and semi comp players playing, back in the day DOW1 had 3 expansion and they added a lot of races/campaigns, today babies will be crying not to add content for the sake of balance/eSports that none cares, this is a clear example on how RTS should be made and return to its roots which was fun it was never about twitch views or huge tournaments.

It's known for it's tight community and mods support, and it's why we've even see the C&C franchise being kept alive by the community and mod support, that it has reached a point where the C&C community may as well own the franchise.

I imagine the numbers for DoW 3 are dead in the water for how that sequel turned out. I know I uninstalled that game as soon as I found how it played.

[Silvertongued Devil]

Originally posted by Jarisbjörn:

I don't think there is a less casual gaming audience than MOBA players. There are the very stereotype of a "sweaty" gamer.

No, the casual audience for RTS is in the singleplayer section. A massive subgroup of the community that has been neglected by RTS devs for long over a decade.

Tempest Rising is very smart to promise a 30 mission campaign right out of the gate. When was the last time someone has done that in the RTS space?

Sorry, perhaps the meaning of casual in this sense is unclear; I mean casual in the sense that oftentimes casual RTS players don't want to get massively into map-spanning micromanagement and all that jazz; they mostly just want to build units and swarm the other guys and feel kinda clever for doing a bit of micro here and there. MOBAs offer that experience - a very focused tactical experience that only requires you to directly control a single unit - and that modern RTS games are unlikely to realistically compete with that on a grand scale. That is to say: very low barrier to entry. Especially since they're F2P.

I do agree single player RTS gamers could use a bit more catering to (especially after the grotesque catastrophe of ESports) but there are multiple single player RTS games, some with base building and others without, that have been coming out for years now. It's just not likely that they'll ever gain the same market share they once had. Even SC2 didn't manage it.

Not unless there's some big cultural shift that makes more people interested in them, at least, but I think for the time being we've carved out our niche.

Oh, and the last time offhand? Five Nations. 50+ missions, fully voiced, decent storyline, released in 2021. Very much Starcraft-styled, too.
Iron Harvest was very single player-focused - that hit in 2020.
CoH3, for all its flaws, has a decent focus on single player.
Spellforce is still going and it is quite explicitly built on the strength of its campaign.

It's not as scarce as you seem to think. You just gotta look for them.

[jonoliveira12]

Originally posted by Silvertongued Devil:

Originally posted by Jarisbjörn:

I don't think there is a less casual gaming audience than MOBA players. There are the very stereotype of a "sweaty" gamer.

No, the casual audience for RTS is in the singleplayer section. A massive subgroup of the community that has been neglected by RTS devs for long over a decade.

Tempest Rising is very smart to promise a 30 mission campaign right out of the gate. When was the last time someone has done that in the RTS space?

Sorry, perhaps the meaning of casual in this sense is unclear; I mean casual in the sense that oftentimes casual RTS players don't want to get massively into map-spanning micromanagement and all that jazz; they mostly just want to build units and swarm the other guys and feel kinda clever for doing a bit of micro here and there. MOBAs offer that experience - a very focused tactical experience that only requires you to directly control a single unit - and that modern RTS games are unlikely to realistically compete with that on a grand scale. That is to say: very low barrier to entry. Especially since they're F2P.

I do agree single player RTS gamers could use a bit more catering to (especially after the grotesque catastrophe of ESports) but there are multiple single player RTS games, some with base building and others without, that have been coming out for years now. It's just not likely that they'll ever gain the same market share they once had. Even SC2 didn't manage it.

Not unless there's some big cultural shift that makes more people interested in them, at least, but I think for the time being we've carved out our niche.

Oh, and the last time offhand? Five Nations. 50+ missions, fully voiced, decent storyline, released in 2021. Very much Starcraft-styled, too.
Iron Harvest was very single player-focused - that hit in 2020.
CoH3, for all its flaws, has a decent focus on single player.
Spellforce is still going and it is quite explicitly built on the strength of its campaign.

It's not as scarce as you seem to think. You just gotta look for them.

Five Nations is also getting DLC soon. That game is a gem, that seems straight out of the 90s.

[SCREAMING RAT!!!!]

They've never been gone, but never big either...

We should all be very thankful RTS isn't as big as it used to be. Sure, we dont get as many of them, but the ones we do get you can at-least be semi-confident on are made by a passionate group that loves the genre as much as we do.

Look at the microtransaction hell games have become, then look at the RTS games. Almost none of them have them. Makes me feel great about loving RTS. Here's hoping we stay this course.

Just my two cents on the subject though.

[Flavalicious]

Originally posted by SCREAMING RAT!!!!:

They've never been gone, but never big either...

We should all be very thankful RTS isn't as big as it used to be. Sure, we dont get as many of them, but the ones we do get you can at-least be semi-confident on are made by a passionate group that loves the genre as much as we do.

Look at the microtransaction hell games have become, then look at the RTS games. Almost none of them have them. Makes me feel great about loving RTS. Here's hoping we stay this course.

Just my two cents on the subject though.

They were definitely big at one time lol. An entire country embraced an RTS game to the point it was on their prime time tv stations lol. Multiple starcraft players with over a million dollars in career earnings :D

That said, whats good for esports isnt whats good for an average player and we are definitely in a rts resurgence. Off the top of my head in the next year or two, this game, homeworld 3, stormgate, and those are only the main ones lol

[Bovril Brigadier]

Originally posted by Flavalicious:

Off the top of my head in the next year or two, this game, homeworld 3, stormgate, and those are only the main ones lol

There's:
Age of Space
Ardent Seas
Barkhan
Broken Arrow
D.O.R.F.
Empire of the Ants
Falling Frontier
Fragile Existence
Global Conflagration
Homeworld 3
Men of War II
Moduwar
Realms of Ruin
Rogue Command
Sanctuary
Sea Power
Stormgate
Stronghold: Definitive Edition
Task Force Admiral
Terminator: Dark Fate - Defiance
The Touhou Empires
Virtueror
Warpaws
World Order

Just a few in or around late 2023 into 2024. Some may swing more to RTT side but get idea. Doesn't count all the management/empire builders and horde of tower defense style games.

[Silvertongued Devil]

Ooh. There's some in there that I missed.
Time to go hunting.