Did you used to play/love RTS games? What might make you do so again?

[wayward]

Back in 'the day' as it were, which is to say the mid-to-late 90s and early 2000s, RTS games were, like, THE AAA games. Warcraft 2 and StarCraft were big deals upon their release and even Supreme Commander and C&C Generals made waves in gaming communities.

Today, the only truly major RTS is StarCraft 2 and even it is being overshadowed by FPS, MOBAs, MMORPGs and more. Conventional wisdom, as it were, suggests that RTS games are 'worse' than they used to be in a variety of ways, though I'm not sure I follow or agree with those arguments.

I don't think its necessary a bad thing that RTS is a niche genre that caters to a certain type of gamer, but I thought it'd be interesting to put the question to a broad gaming audience.

Back in the 'glory days' of RTS - did you play and love Red Alert 1&2? Warcraft? SupCom? Generals? What keeps you from picking up RTS games these days (there are still plenty out there)? What would possibly entice you to play another one? Would it be mechanics? Story?

[Mezmorki]

Escrito originalmente por Biz:

as long as i'm spending 80% of my attention thinking about what to do and 20% of it fiddling with the UI, then RTS can be just as deep as turn based

unfortunately, stuff like starcraft is the opposite ratio

i liked stuff like age of empires and rise of nations where the focus was more about thinking how to play on random maps (like civilization), rather than executing build orders

Yeah - you should check out Total Annihilation or it's successors (Supreme Commander, Spring RTS, Zero-K). Far more focused on the big picture ebb and flow of the battle front at a higher zoom and the macro economy instead of micro'ing hordes of units with their own abilities.

[Biz]

i'm not talking about macro vs micro

i'm talking about the attention spent having to click on stuff versus the attention of planning & resource management & optimization

games of TA/Supcom are still decided by APM because how effectively you manage hundreds/thousands of units is so important. the larger scale actually hurts those games, even if unit micro is reduced.

i'm not saying they're bad games, but the ratio of management to strategy isn't what i enjoy


games of rise of nations are usually decided by what order you researched things and what wonders you decided to make.

games of age of empires are decided by what you did with your first 20 villagers. it's really more of an economic game than a military game

but both of these games also fall apart in the late game once you reach hundreds of units and run out of tech options. their end game is just a military war of macromanagement + micromanagement just like every other RTS


a common pattern i notice is that games that focus on military are almost always about APM

games that focus on buildings & gatherers & technologies have a much easier time avoiding APM-dependence because there's less stuff to click on

that's why offworld trading company is probably the most interesting RTS i am looking forward to. there's no military management at all :)

[Tragic]

Escrito originalmente por Mezmorki:

Yeah - you should check out Total Annihilation or it's successors (Supreme Commander, Spring RTS, Zero-K).

Isn't Planetary Annihilation made by the same guy?

http://store.steampowered.com/app/233250/

[wayward]

Planetary Annihilation was not made by Chris Taylor, but some of the people that worked on Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander are on the development team.

[Tragic]

oh? i always thought it was the same lead guy....