RTS games demand so much time and patience from the player to learn. What’s the proper build order? What’s the best unit composition? How many workers should get allocated for each resource? These things aren’t always obvious. And you don’t have time to read all descriptions because the time is ticking.
Not to mention good APM and battle tactics.
Shooters are much easier to understand: aim and shoot. You don’t need to follow YouTube guides to understand that.
Shooters are much easier to understand: aim and shoot. You don’t need to follow YouTube guides to understand that.
They demand so much time and patience. Whats the best weapon load out, where to move to be safe from fire, how to avoid enemy snipers, trying to figure out the excessive complexity of what WSAD does.
RTS games are much easier to understand. You drag a box around your units, and click the enemy and watch them blow up. You don’t need to follow youtube guides to understand that.
My point is that there’s usually an easier level of entry for other types of games. You aim and shoot, and you get instant feedback if you succeeded or not. You don’t need to understand advanced meta to get this, although it can help.
For many RTS games it can all be dependent on how fast you expanded your economy, not on how you play your units. You can fail the entire game because of bad gameplay early.
You don’t meed to have any advanced meta knowledge to play most games. There are options like playing against easier ai’s or similarly skilled players.
Look at some Low Elo Legends from the game Age of Empires 2 on Youtube from T90. Most don’t use advanced meta.
Heck, I as a kid never used advanced meta and had loads of fun.
The internet TELLS you that the latest meta is necessary and that you play suboptimally. But they’re just optimizing the fun out of the game for you if you’re not that kind of player.
This mentality is even worse in competetive shooters. People playing the latest “meta” even though they don’t realize they don’t even have the skill to pull that meta off. I wish the “internet” would just let players have fun in their own way. And that playing games “suboptimally” can still be just as fun and rewarding an experience.
I think the key difference is that it’s “easier” to apply a meta to a RTS game. In shooters, the meta often involves quick reflex decisions, where to hide, where to shoot etc. This is hard, and requires practice. It also means there is a significant number of players not applying it, or doing so sub-optimally.
With RTS games, the metas are easier to apply. This means that, in human Vs human games, the newer players often get flattened. It also means that far more complex metas can be developed and applied.
Shooters tend to back load the difficulty curve. It’s easy to get into them, and not do badly, but hard to do well. RTS games tend to front load the difficulty. You need to get over the initial hump to get “ok” with it. Once over the hump, the curve smooths off and you get good fairly rapidly.
One of the big differences between nerds and normals is that nerds enjoy punching through that wall. The difficulty is seen as a challenge, not an impediment. Most people want a faster feedback loop on the dopamine reward. FPS type games deliver that extremely well.
Important addition: the majority of people isnt equipped for this kind of game. Patience and ability to grasp this kind of thing is what makes the computer nerds the computer nerds.
Programming and sysadmin stuff isnt really popular either for that express reason.
There was one on Xbox original where you talk using the headset. It’s military with tanks, etc. Its like "unit 3 attack objective A… All units hold… Unit 3 patrol… It was awesome but the campaign was short and as far as I remember there was no skirmish/play with PC.
Star Wars: Empire at War is a classic with more nontraditional gameplay and light 4x elements (no diplomacy). The modding scene is rich too, with Thrawn’s Revenge for the EU and multiple Clone Wars mods.
I wish I could play a game where I could talk in real time instead of click, prepare attacks with my generals before the battle and settle a strategy, and where the fastest tabber-clicker is not the one who always wins.
Why? Because I’m getting old, that’s why, and anyone who ever played a competitive RTS knows exactly what it means.
Try the Total War games, especially the older (non-Warhammer) ones. Units take time to carry out actions, there is no point and not really a way to do insane actions per minute counts, as if a unit is engaged in melee, it can’t really disengage without losses. There is also a great scale to the whole thing. I loved Shogun 2 for example.
I also like Eugen games like Wargame, Steel Division or Warno if a modern shooty type thing is more your game. Maybe try Regiments, that one is also good and maybe a bit less complex than Eugen titles.
Neither of these has base building, both are more of a “this is how many soldiers get for this battle, use them wisely” type game.
You have just perfectly explained why I loved Shogun so much! It was much more forgiving to learn, and to then excel at. Very much a fun RTS. Atleast the original was very well made, I should try the second one.
RTS did go mainstream and it indeed turned into games very different from old school SC et al.
Plants vs zombies and LoL are the descendants of the genre and are or at least were, HUGE. Tower defense and moba are the two evolutionary paths that RTS took.
Tower defense is super mainstream, but moba, while huge isn’t really mainstream in my opinion. But one things for sure, they don’t have much in common with SC except the lineage.
If you miss that old style of game, that’s fine, but there are probably tons of ways to morph the RTS genre that solves its old problems, finds it more success, and still scratches that itch. I’m quite fond of Cannon Brawl, and Tooth and Tail had its issues but was on the right track.
That selling to the next buyer who throws money at you obviously leads to risks of getting shutdown. People don’t want or care about long term sustainability and cry when business daddy decides that record profits this year don’t match up with imaginary made up profit growth and hence declare this as a failure.
Edit: “Making good, profitable games ‘will no longer keep you safe’” But only if you sold your soul for a bunch of retirement money from Bethesda or whoever else. If you are so keen on that sweet retirement exit then your studio was doomed the moment somebody offered the founders to a buyout. I am baffled at how people are missing this obvious conclusion.
That selling to the next buyer who throws money at you obviously leads to risks of getting shutdown. People don’t want or care about long term sustainability and cry when business daddy decides that record profits this year don’t match up with imaginary made up profit growth and hence declare this as a failure.
Edit: “Making good, profitable games ‘will no longer keep you safe’” But only if you sold your soul for a bunch of retirement money from Bethesda or whoever else. If you are so keen on that sweet retirement exit then your studio was doomed the moment somebody offered the founders to a buyout. I am baffled at how people are missing this obvious conclusion.
I said what I said. That’s just the thing: I don’t want them dead anymore. I want them deprived of power, deprived of agency, and forced to watch the world they ruined actually repaired. Alive.
CEO says “I want to make more money”. Crowd responded “No shit”.
I’ve seen a theory that Steam is holding, possibly even for a time when Sony puts it in writing that players won’t need a PSN account permanently before they’re willing to relist the game which I think is a fair desire at this point.
It’s like an administrator/tenant relationship. Generally, the publisher controls the region locks, but if the publisher starts doing something potentially illegal or brand-damaging, like selling a bricked game, the store owner can also manipulate the locks.
If they couldn’t, a dev’s efforts to willingly commit brand suicide by releasing a game that bricks people’s computers (not beyond the pale given how stupid publishers are now) would also take Steam down with them.
That makes sense, but I haven’t seen any official announcement from Steam saying that they did this. Only speculation from random people. Any documentation I can find just seems to point to this being a decision that’s made by the company releasing the game (or in this case Sony as the publisher).
I doubt that Steam is still trying to block additional countries given that Sony has already announced that the PSN account requirement is being withdrawn.
The thing with the 3 new countries seems to be a fix by valve, you might notice that there were several invalid country codes in the previous restricted list.
NES releases don’t bother me because I was still a kid when I played them. Things released twenty years ago bother me because it seems like yesterday given that I was already an adult with an established career and a mortgage.
No that’s the point I’m making. When I read the headline I was horrified that it’s been that long since the original and they’re not even talking about that.
No I didn’t say it originally came out then I said that my first knee-jerk reaction was that it couldn’t possibly been that long since the original and then I came to realize it’s been so much longer
You know how kids will want anything that has their favourite character on it? Gamers are just like that. Elder Scrolls 6 can have 1 minute ads in between areas and it would still top sales charts because gamers cannot stop themselves.
I really hope the recent pushback Sony got will spark a new norm but I’m very cynical.
I think Sony just delisted Ghost of Tsushima from all countries where PSN isn’t available, even though it’s primarily a single player game that won’t require PSN.
So Sony is still on their bullshit, even though they conceded over Helldivers.
I’ve been an Xbox fan for a long time and 3 months ago my GamePass Ultimate subscription ran out. Been pondering buying up another 3 years to continue it since Hellblade 2 is coming out this month. This recent fiasco has changed my opinion of Xbox and I will no longer be supporting Xbox as I have been. Might buy a month membership just to play Hellblade for less than the actual price of the game, but otherwise I’m done. Fuck them
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Aktywne