I hope we will se more non-micro RTS games. More like HOI4, but that takes less than 1 hour to finish a game. Dune and Line Wars are on the right track.
There’s plenty of “evolved” RTSs in the indie scene:
Against the storm is trying a roguelike approach
Kingdoms and Castles is a banished-like survival with RTS elements
Endzone is also a sort of survival-crafter with some strategy mixed in, albeit with some issues.
Beyond All Reason is an open source RTS that’s expanding the Total Anihilation formula.
Manor Lords is a fantastic medieval strategy
8/9 bit armies are colourful, fast paced strategies.
The genre is far from dead, but the problem might be audience. When they demand “evolution” that means it should pander to recent trends like survival crafting and roguelikes and whatnot. Problem is some of these formulas don’t usually pan out well for RTS games. Then there’s multiplayer and, like other commenters mentioned, ranked multiplayer usually devolves into a bunch of strangers playing the same few maps over and over, but gamers still demand multiplayer.
Alas, I see the genre as not dead but in a “doomed if you do, doomed if you don’t” spot. Meanwhile I’m sitting here waiting for a regular old historic RTS like Empire Earth or Rise of Nations.
I just want an RTS I can actually play with my wrist in its current condition. I can do the earliest C&C campaigns, but that’s partially because the AI isn’t good enough to require fast and precise mouse movements. I just physically can’t do micro anymore and attempting it hurts, but most RTS games are designed in such a way that micro is required.
I hear you! Stopped playing RTS when starcraft came out :-/ For me it’s like another type of game based on adrenaline and quick mouse movements. Guess it sells better.
Loved the old Warcraft, ough-da! and C&C & Red Alert ofc. The golden age.
Ashes of Singularity tends to be easy on the action-per-minute requirement, since there’s no micromanaging individual units, unless it’s the larger ships, so you can probably have a good time with it.
I’d add They are Billions as another evolutionary branch that’s doing something different. Starting to see some clones of this formula.
That said, I don’t think Against the Storm or Manor Lords are the kind of games Pottinger is talking about. Against the Storm doesn’t even have combat. Those are more in the city builder realm.
They are Billions is a very interesting game, but stupidly stressful. It takes ONE fucking zombie getting past your defenses to completely fuck your base
True, they’re a bit off the mark, but they were the ones off the top of my head. Also, in my defense, I don’t think Pottinger knows what he’s talking about either. The man glorifies Age3 like crazy, saying they had to scale back some features, fearing they’d prove too revolutionary. I love Age3, but the game was hardly world-shaking. Take its contemporary Rise of Legends, now that was a title that went balls out.
Still, I’m curious what they’re cooking up in that new studio.
This is why RTS shouldn’t focus on the PvP portion of the game. A good campaign and arcade is what Blizzard did and it worked. The greatest thing Blizzard ever ever did was to add in the custom map creator which was fully featured.
Some of them already evolved into a tounerous new goblin of a subspecies (MOBAs) to fill a different niche, the rest stayed the same because they were already good as is. That’s literally how evolution works. You don’t improve RTS by drastically changing the formula, you improve then with graphics, lore, and interesting mechanics within the existing framework. If you evolve the formula then it’s not an RTS anymore.
If anything, I think RTS need to go back to its roots. I’m not a huge RTS fan, and I’m not particularly nostalgic about the genre, but I have played a few games. My favorite? AoE2! It’s just a damn good game.
Even as an RTS fan, I’m starting to think the genre is dead. AOE 3 actually had some nice updates to the genre, they abandoned most of it though. Sc2 improved on the DoW2 campaign, but it’s been nothing since.
Part of the problem is the focus on competitive formats. Pretty much everyone admits it’s the least popular format, but it also gets the most attention. Campaign, comp stomps, and co-op are by far the most popular formats, but they get little or no support. Part of it is the pressure to release so early, and competitive is just easier to focus on while fleshing out mechanics and factions. Another problem is listening to pro players of other games, they don’t know shit about making a good game, they know what they like about an existing game and want that as much as possible.
Another big problem is focusing on players of well established games. The people still playing ladder on SC2 or AOE2 aren’t moving anywhere, there’s probably 20x players that have stopped with those games that would love something new. Instead all that gets released are shallow copies trying to get players to move off a game they’ve played for a decade.
It must be playable for casual and single player gamers for sure.
I’ve never seen a casual friendly multiplayer RTS I believe. The FPS genre manage to do this, so I think it should be possible. Hmm… Nothguard, Dune: Spice Wars, Line Wars and maybe Total War. These could maybe be considered casual friendly multiplayer RTS.
Though I must admit I want a good e-sport RTS I can watch and maybe dip my toes in, now when SC2 and AOE both feel quite dead. It’s the only e-sport that really entertains me. (we’ll maybe chess is an e-sport as well nowadays)
Slightly different, but I stopped playing Rocket League not long after they abandoned all the cool weird arenas because it got boring playing exactly the same map with a different skin.
They standardised the arenas after listening to what the pro players wanted.
Which kinda proves that Nintendo is right with how to balance Smash Bros: it’s a game to be played for fun, not for pro player tournaments (no items final destination fox only).
I watched the trailer and the evolution they’re going with is apparently not making an RTS anymore, but an Action Roguelike. If that’s the kind of evolution we’re talking about, I feel we’ve already stuff in a similar vein (dunno specifically about roguelike though).
And that, too, isn’t new. It’s been done since at least the Spellforce series, or Dawn of War 2.
If you want to see what an “innovated” RTS looks like, check out Beyond All Reason. The base formula is Total Annihilation, but with nearly 30 years of player driven improvements and QoL. That game’s UX is extremely smart, and you can keybind or automate so many things on the fly, freeing you up to make strategic and tactical level decisions , instead of spamclicking for micro. Which, you can also do if you want to.
Thank you, zero k interface is amazing, and their “cold takes” show a design philosophy I constantly find myself wishing I’d find pretty much everywhere else.
They have quite a few posts that are primarily about design philosophy. It’s clear they put a lot of time and effort into it. One of my favorites that has driven a lot of innovation in you can interact with the game is
That’s what it was called, I tried to remember the game from a couple of months ago, when a bunch of big RTS streamers were suddenly all playing it for a few days. I’ve never seen a game that got boring so fast.
Typical micro-only focus with basebuilding and economy completely automated and a extremly limited pre-selected tech tree.
I’d be happy if they pandered more to controller players without removing the decision making in base building, like Halo Wars did. I always look to Cannon Brawl as an indication of what RTS can still be (by which I mean, not exactly like Cannon Brawl).
I have. It does have base building, but it doesn’t really have choke points the way that StarCraft does. That doesn’t make it a deal-breaker, as I do enjoy that game. In fact, the way it has a controllable character that puts a controller-friendly speed limit on APM is something it has in common with Cannon Brawl.
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It’s people that need to evolve, not games
I hope we will se more non-micro RTS games. More like HOI4, but that takes less than 1 hour to finish a game. Dune and Line Wars are on the right track.
As long as the evolution doest involve micro transactions.
There’s plenty of “evolved” RTSs in the indie scene:
The genre is far from dead, but the problem might be audience. When they demand “evolution” that means it should pander to recent trends like survival crafting and roguelikes and whatnot. Problem is some of these formulas don’t usually pan out well for RTS games. Then there’s multiplayer and, like other commenters mentioned, ranked multiplayer usually devolves into a bunch of strangers playing the same few maps over and over, but gamers still demand multiplayer.
Alas, I see the genre as not dead but in a “doomed if you do, doomed if you don’t” spot. Meanwhile I’m sitting here waiting for a regular old historic RTS like Empire Earth or Rise of Nations.
Gamers don’t demand multiplayer, companies wanting to sell skins do. When your content is zero effort, mods easily outdo you.
I just want an RTS I can actually play with my wrist in its current condition. I can do the earliest C&C campaigns, but that’s partially because the AI isn’t good enough to require fast and precise mouse movements. I just physically can’t do micro anymore and attempting it hurts, but most RTS games are designed in such a way that micro is required.
I hear you! Stopped playing RTS when starcraft came out :-/ For me it’s like another type of game based on adrenaline and quick mouse movements. Guess it sells better.
Loved the old Warcraft, ough-da! and C&C & Red Alert ofc. The golden age.
RTS always requires micro - it’s real time. If micro is not required, strategy is not requires in an RTS.
Micro is actually tactics since it’s on the level of a single engagement. Strategy is more about the game as a whole, like scouting and map control.
Ashes of Singularity tends to be easy on the action-per-minute requirement, since there’s no micromanaging individual units, unless it’s the larger ships, so you can probably have a good time with it.
I’d add They are Billions as another evolutionary branch that’s doing something different. Starting to see some clones of this formula.
That said, I don’t think Against the Storm or Manor Lords are the kind of games Pottinger is talking about. Against the Storm doesn’t even have combat. Those are more in the city builder realm.
They are Billions is a very interesting game, but stupidly stressful. It takes ONE fucking zombie getting past your defenses to completely fuck your base
True, they’re a bit off the mark, but they were the ones off the top of my head. Also, in my defense, I don’t think Pottinger knows what he’s talking about either. The man glorifies Age3 like crazy, saying they had to scale back some features, fearing they’d prove too revolutionary. I love Age3, but the game was hardly world-shaking. Take its contemporary Rise of Legends, now that was a title that went balls out.
Still, I’m curious what they’re cooking up in that new studio.
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IMO the problem is learning curve, it makes it difficult for non-rts players to get into it
And the menuing in the trailer (tech trees) seems to exasperate this issue
This is why I believe immortal gates of pyre will win
https://sunspeargames.com/skill-ceiling/
This is why RTS shouldn’t focus on the PvP portion of the game. A good campaign and arcade is what Blizzard did and it worked. The greatest thing Blizzard ever ever did was to add in the custom map creator which was fully featured.
Agreed, it’s always a bit of a commitment to learn the options at first.
If you want to see a good modern take on an RTS, check out Mechabellum.
No one was even close to do something as good as starcraft 2. How they will evolve the genre?
Immortal gates of pyre are going to overthrow it, they have such an amazing team and the game looks fucking awesome
I hope so
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Sc2 WoL is one if my favourite games, and no RTS has come close to it in my eyes
that was also my favorite… but now it’s immortal gates of pyre, they have a perfect team to overthrow it.
Some of them already evolved into a tounerous new goblin of a subspecies (MOBAs) to fill a different niche, the rest stayed the same because they were already good as is. That’s literally how evolution works. You don’t improve RTS by drastically changing the formula, you improve then with graphics, lore, and interesting mechanics within the existing framework. If you evolve the formula then it’s not an RTS anymore.
If anything, I think RTS need to go back to its roots. I’m not a huge RTS fan, and I’m not particularly nostalgic about the genre, but I have played a few games. My favorite? AoE2! It’s just a damn good game.
Even as an RTS fan, I’m starting to think the genre is dead. AOE 3 actually had some nice updates to the genre, they abandoned most of it though. Sc2 improved on the DoW2 campaign, but it’s been nothing since.
Part of the problem is the focus on competitive formats. Pretty much everyone admits it’s the least popular format, but it also gets the most attention. Campaign, comp stomps, and co-op are by far the most popular formats, but they get little or no support. Part of it is the pressure to release so early, and competitive is just easier to focus on while fleshing out mechanics and factions. Another problem is listening to pro players of other games, they don’t know shit about making a good game, they know what they like about an existing game and want that as much as possible.
Another big problem is focusing on players of well established games. The people still playing ladder on SC2 or AOE2 aren’t moving anywhere, there’s probably 20x players that have stopped with those games that would love something new. Instead all that gets released are shallow copies trying to get players to move off a game they’ve played for a decade.
https://sunspeargames.com/skill-ceiling/ immortal has this figured out, after playing in both playtests and seeing how the devs handle new ideas I’m set
It must be playable for casual and single player gamers for sure.
I’ve never seen a casual friendly multiplayer RTS I believe. The FPS genre manage to do this, so I think it should be possible. Hmm… Nothguard, Dune: Spice Wars, Line Wars and maybe Total War. These could maybe be considered casual friendly multiplayer RTS.
Though I must admit I want a good e-sport RTS I can watch and maybe dip my toes in, now when SC2 and AOE both feel quite dead. It’s the only e-sport that really entertains me. (we’ll maybe chess is an e-sport as well nowadays)
The ultimate casual RTS is a moba.
I’m still extremely salty over Homeworld 2, that I waited like the messiah, for this…
Slightly different, but I stopped playing Rocket League not long after they abandoned all the cool weird arenas because it got boring playing exactly the same map with a different skin.
They standardised the arenas after listening to what the pro players wanted.
Which kinda proves that Nintendo is right with how to balance Smash Bros: it’s a game to be played for fun, not for pro player tournaments (no items final destination fox only).
I swear, standardization kills fun and creativity.
I watched the trailer and the evolution they’re going with is apparently not making an RTS anymore, but an Action Roguelike. If that’s the kind of evolution we’re talking about, I feel we’ve already stuff in a similar vein (dunno specifically about roguelike though).
And that, too, isn’t new. It’s been done since at least the Spellforce series, or Dawn of War 2.
If you want to see what an “innovated” RTS looks like, check out Beyond All Reason. The base formula is Total Annihilation, but with nearly 30 years of player driven improvements and QoL. That game’s UX is extremely smart, and you can keybind or automate so many things on the fly, freeing you up to make strategic and tactical level decisions , instead of spamclicking for micro. Which, you can also do if you want to.
Ooh, now this I gotta try out.
Thanks for the recommendation!
zero-k is also like that, less emphasis on the graphics though but more on the gameplay
Thank you, zero k interface is amazing, and their “cold takes” show a design philosophy I constantly find myself wishing I’d find pretty much everywhere else.
Can you elaborate what you mean by cold takes and why that’s something you wish more of?
They have quite a few posts that are primarily about design philosophy. It’s clear they put a lot of time and effort into it. One of my favorites that has driven a lot of innovation in you can interact with the game is
https://zero-k.info/mediawiki/Cold_Takes/3_-_Fight_your_opponent,_not_the_UI
One that I find myself coming to a sort of grudging agreement with is (veterancy for units isn’t good):
https://zero-k.info/mediawiki/Cold_Takes/15_-_Experiences_With_Veterancy
They are evolving. Just look at battle aces
That’s what it was called, I tried to remember the game from a couple of months ago, when a bunch of big RTS streamers were suddenly all playing it for a few days. I’ve never seen a game that got boring so fast.
Typical micro-only focus with basebuilding and economy completely automated and a extremly limited pre-selected tech tree.
It was fun to play. Early Access / beta access ended which is why everyone stopped playing it.
Looking forward to release
Yeah usually “innovation” comes with pandering to mobile users and microtransactions. So we’re good, thanks.
I’d be happy if they pandered more to controller players without removing the decision making in base building, like Halo Wars did. I always look to Cannon Brawl as an indication of what RTS can still be (by which I mean, not exactly like Cannon Brawl).
Have you checked Tooth and Tail? I don’t think it has base building, but is a very controller friendly RTS
I have. It does have base building, but it doesn’t really have choke points the way that StarCraft does. That doesn’t make it a deal-breaker, as I do enjoy that game. In fact, the way it has a controllable character that puts a controller-friendly speed limit on APM is something it has in common with Cannon Brawl.
And the AoE franchise tried that at least twice and failed.