For the real-time strategy fans: what do you think of classic RTS franchises mainly living on by remasters/ports?

[Deleted member 2254]

Not too long ago, Blizzard released an HD remaster of their hit RTS, StarCraft, despite the sequel's existence. The WarCraft RTS franchise never continued after WarCraft 3 over a decade and a half ago (World Of Warcraft and Hearthstone obviously aren't real-time strategy games), with that game that recently got an HD update and will soon get a full-on remaster. While Age Of Empires IV is (slowly) coming it seems, first we're getting HD remasters of the first 3 games. The Command & Conquer franchise seems as good as dead bar that mobile game, but we've learned not long ago that they're remastering the classics of the franchise, with brand new cutscenes and music to boot by the original actors and musicians (Klepacki's back, yo). Other franchises that we got back in the form of remasters but aren't really getting new episodes include Age Of Mythology, The Settlers and Stronghold (this one got games not too long ago but there's still more HD remasters than new content lately). We had a new Homeworld game but the hype was stolen by the HD remasters of the first games instead. While some of the classic franchises like Total War live on with new installments, it feels like most of the classics of the golden age of RTS games are either long dead (RIP Empire Earth, RIP Dune) or pretty much only existing in the form of remasters.

Clearly there are newew franchises as well like They Are Billions, Halo Wars or Iron Harvest, but whereas many other genres' classics keep coming back in one form or another (see shooters where Wolfenstein, Doom, Quake, Unreal Tournament, Duke Nukem, etc. still come back from time to time), games like Age Of Empires, StarCraft or Command & Conquer haven't got a sequel in quite some time, and it seems like it'll be long before this happens. It's understandable, of course, MOBAs in particular did a lot to kill the buzz around the genre and the genre seems to have hit a bit of a roadblock, as few franchises managed to add positive innovations to a an already near-perfect formula. Predictably, most big publishers are not into risking huge failures by wasting resources on what could end up being a niche product, and given how most of these franchises belong to giants like EA, Microsoft or Activision-Blizzard and not random indies, it perhaps couldn't be any other way.

What is your view on all this? Did you expect to be playing StarCraft 4, WarCraft 6, Command & Conquer: Red Alert 5, Age Of Empires VI by this point in time some 15-20 years ago? Are you satisfied these timeless classics are getting HD ports or full remasters to make them live even longer? Are you angry they keep on remastering the classics but they can't be bothered to make new ones? Let me know in the posts below. I even included a handy poll that basically boils down to "positive", "neutral", "negative" and "apathetic", if you will, though of course it's explained better in the options.

Personally, I fall into the second category. I gladly play the remasters for games like WarCraft 3 and Age Of Empires, but at the same time I'm disappointed that entire decades may pass before these games actually get a follow-up in the form of actual sequels. While many of the later sequels failed to live up to the classics (Command & Conquer in particular went in a very wrong direction), I still believe that these franchises still have places to go and playerbases to find, and I'm sure that a truly remarkable new Age Of Empires or C&C would still find a solid audience to this day. I'll be buying many of the remasters, but man, I'd also play a Red Alert 4 or WarCraft 4 any day. What about you?

 

[Jackano]

I really miss Command & Conquer.
At least with remasters we will have the core gameplay we like, not those weird things EA has done. They wouldn't even try anymore anyway.

 

[Deleted member 2254]

I really miss Command & Conquer.
At least with remasters we will have the core gameplay we like, not those weird things EA has done. They wouldn't even try anymore anyway.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, EA kinda proved they don't really get C&C with the last installments. I personally enjoyed Red Alert 3's wackiness, but it wasn't quite as good as Red Alert 2. May as well stick to the classics if they don't know how to improve on the formula.

 

[i hate cheaters]

i'd actually like some remasters that actually remake the game with better UI / pathfinding / AI / netcode / matchmaking

the problem is most of these re-releases are just ports with higher resolution

also, i mostly want single player stuff from these types of things. i want to get maybe 10-30 hours worth of fun from old RTS games, and that isn't really enough time to learn multiplayer. i also don't care about playing an APM war anymore

as far as new games, i want more stuff like rise of nations, not all this micromanagement-heavy crap

 

[DocSeuss]

RTS developers: everyone wants to make MOBAs, we'll make all our games with MOBA and tactics mechanics

Also RTS developers: why do people want all these old remasters and not new games?

Because base building is what makes RTS games fun. The overlap between MOBA and RTS is minimal, but developers KEEP PUSHING for it and it's not fucking fun. People are thirsty for the gameplay they actually enjoy. Garbage lane-driven games like Dawn of War 3 aren't what anyone wants. We keep going back to Warcraft 3 and Age of Empires and Command and Conquer because building bases and lots of unit types and making interesting armies is FUN.

 

[Nerun]

Well, we're getting Age of Empires IV, which is a new game and also a new Settlers, not a remake, though I don't see the latter as a RTS (still love it though, but I'm German, so ^^)

I would love some new (good) RTS games, but it could depend on the success of Warcraft Reforged and C&C and Red Alert Remaster, if they sell really well, we might see a new installment or more Remasters... ;)

There are some minor RTS titles like 8-Bit Armies and another one, were I just forgot the name and kind find it....was (is?) in Early-Access and you could basically combine parts to form your own army/units.

But to be honest, I'm really missing good/big new RTS games, seems like ages ago...I enjoyed Halo Wars 1&" in co-op and Starcraft 2 for all campaigns and co-op, but that's it pretty much in the last time (years). Games like They Are Billions are great, but for me they are no real or classic RTS titles.

Still looking forward to the C&C and Red Alert Remaster, but I kind of disliked the Starcraft 1 Remaster (not enough changes for me and main focus for eSport, etc.).

 

[Tunned]

Because base building is what makes RTS games fun. The overlap between MOBA and RTS is minimal, but developers KEEP PUSHING for it and it's not fucking fun. People are thirsty for the gameplay they actually enjoy. Garbage lane-driven games like Dawn of War 3 aren't what anyone wants. We keep going back to Warcraft 3 and Age of Empires and Command and Conquer because building bases and lots of unit types and making interesting armies is FUN.

Click to shrink...

This. Although I love that my favourite games of all time are getting remasters, I'm dissapointed they aren't getting new installments, and I hate EA for what they did with Generals 2, that actually looked good! Hopefully they will revive the project one day and give us a proper C&C with no F2P BS.

 

[Deleted member 2254]

i'd actually like some remasters that actually remake the game with better UI / pathfinding / AI / netcode / matchmaking

the problem is most of these re-releases are just ports with higher resolution

also, i mostly want single player stuff from these types of things. i want to get maybe 10-30 hours worth of fun from old RTS games, and that isn't really enough time to learn multiplayer. i also don't care about playing an APM war anymore

as far as new games, i want more stuff like rise of nations, not all this micromanagement-heavy crap

Click to shrink...

The new C&C games seem to be what you want: effectively modern remasters of the classics, keeping the old school balance and units but also updating the UI, the soundtrack, the AI and so on. Hopefully they'll deliver, because I'd play a good RTS campaign myself.

RTS developers: everyone wants to make MOBAs, we'll make all our games with MOBA and tactics mechanics

Also RTS developers: why do people want all these old remasters and not new games?

Because base building is what makes RTS games fun. The overlap between MOBA and RTS is minimal, but developers KEEP PUSHING for it and it's not fucking fun. People are thirsty for the gameplay they actually enjoy. Garbage lane-driven games like Dawn of War 3 aren't what anyone wants. We keep going back to Warcraft 3 and Age of Empires and Command and Conquer because building bases and lots of unit types and making interesting armies is FUN.

Click to shrink...

Excellent point. MOBAs and such only take out a single aspect or two of what made RTS games great. Base building, resource management, building fortifications for defense, using largely different units to overcome obstacles... not enough games do this well anymore, as devs keep dumbing it down to lanes, fight minigames in small arenas or stupid timers to wait out for them MTXs. It's crazy how a relatively outdated game like the first Age Of Empires still feels much more complete and complex than most games sold off as strategy games nowadays.

 

[Cort]

Maybe it's because I'm really cynical and consider Starcraft 2 to be the last PC RTS title for Starcraft (at least until the year 2030), I welcome remasters, because the future I think RTS will have is unfortunately spinoff mobile RTS games. I think EA was the last hope for RTS games after releasing great games like Battle for Middle Earth and Red Alert 3, but then they stopped making them.

 

[Protome]

I'm pretty okay with it because SC2 is still going strong and indies have started picking up the slack. I'm happy to get new takes on the RTS rather than rehashing old franchises forever.
Northgard and They Are Billions from last year for example are two outstanding takes on the RTS genre.

 

[Hilarious_Bearious]

Well, we're getting Age of Empires IV, which is a new game and also a new Settlers, not a remake, though I don't see the latter as a RTS (still love it though, but I'm German, so ^^)

Click to shrink...

That's a fair point; Settlers is really an economy/logistics puzzle with RTS elements. I too absolutely love it, thank you wonderful German people for keeping it alive for so long :D

I loved Warcraft 2&3, and WoW at launch, and had always assumed that after 6 or 7 years they'd do some epic event to kill the world off to make way for a Warcraft 4. I don't think anybody expected WoW to be the massive, unstoppable juggernaut that it is. I don't think we will ever get a Warcraft 4 now, and I don't think Blizzard has the right people/talent/structure to make a great WarCraft game anymore :(

 

[Deleted member 2254]

Well, we're getting Age of Empires IV, which is a new game and also a new Settlers, not a remake, though I don't see the latter as a RTS (still love it though, but I'm German, so ^^)

I would love some new (good) RTS games, but it could depend on the success of Warcraft Reforged and C&C and Red Alert Remaster, if they sell really well, we might see a new installment or more Remasters... ;)

There are some minor RTS titles like 8-Bit Armies and another one, were I just forgot the name and kind find it....was (is?) in Early-Access and you could basically combine parts to form your own army/units.

But to be honest, I'm really missing good/big new RTS games, seems like ages ago...I enjoyed Halo Wars 1&" in co-op and Starcraft 2 for all campaigns and co-op, but that's it pretty much in the last time (years). Games like They Are Billions are great, but for me they are no real or classic RTS titles.

Still looking forward to the C&C and Red Alert Remaster, but I kind of disliked the Starcraft 1 Remaster (not enough changes for me and main focus for eSport, etc.).

Click to shrink...

I also have a liking for Settlers, used to play it a lot back in the day, but even there I seem to encounter more HD remasters than new games. It feels like it's another franchise where the old games are simply more interesting to many than the new ones.

 

[Namdrater]

The indies are picking up the slack with some new ideas. I wouldn't trust any AAA developer to take one of their old RTS games and make a good sequel or one that stayed true to the games roots. As much as I adored Warcraft 1, 2 and 3, I'm pretty sure Warcraft4 released by Blizzard would be complete trash in comparison. Thank GabeN they didn't get their hands on Dota and ruin it.

Very excited and interested to see how AoE4 turns out. I hope it's a great game and finds success. I'm not very optimistic though :(

 

[AlsoZ]

Call me pessimistic but at this point I'm fine with replaying old games and their remasters.
RTS is the ONLY genre where I can go back 10, 20 years and think "yeah, I'd rather play this than newer games".

Most of the developers of my favorite RTS franchises do not exist anymore or went into a different direction.
Those with an actual budget would tend to chase multiplayer/esports, which I do not care about in the least. That includes "the MOBA audience".
There's a big variety of STRATEGY games but few with the particular "RTS" mix that I'm fond of.

Pretty much only NEW franchises have a chance to bring a fresh (but at the same time familiar) wind to the genre, even if they generally lack the production values for obvious reasons.

 

[FreezerGeezer]

Give me Warcraft 4 and LOTR: Battle for Middle Earth 3. Although make it properly or not at all.

 

[Steiner_Zi]

The big studios may not even try but on the other hand there are a lot of indie RTS games released every year on Steam like Northgard and Empires Apart. I've been keen to try Northgard especially, does anyone have any recommendations?

 

[Kromeo]

I've been keen to try Northgard especially, does anyone have any recommendations?

Click to shrink...

I bought it on sale along with Homeworld remastered a couple of weeks ago, it seemed to be pretty well reviewed on steam...

 

[Nerun]

The big studios may not even try but on the other hand there are a lot of indie RTS games released every year on Steam like Northgard and Empires Apart. I've been keen to try Northgard especially, does anyone have any recommendations?

Click to shrink...

I liked Northgard, but it's more related to The Settlers than a traditional RTS from my viewpoint. Very limited number on buildings and troops, but still fun.

 

[QuixoticNeutral]

This is an issue that is quite dear to my heart, but I'll try to control myself and refrain from saying everything I want to say at once.

Let's see if I can keep it succinct. (No spoilers below; I'm only using the tags so my post doesn't invade your whole screen.)

Spoiler: 1. Remasters and preservation

In terms of preservation and continued playability, the RTS genre was uniquely screwed by the fact that it peaked at just about the worst time you could imagine. HD and widescreen were a few years off, 64-bit wasn't on anybody's mind, network code was in many cases dependent on third-party infrastructures like GameSpy that later went under, publishers ran around like chickens with their heads cut off to work out what to do with DRM before the emergence of the modern digital storefront consensus, the industry was en route to massive consolidation, the genre is inherently not that portable outside of the PC space, and let's not even talk about the state of the operating systems. That period in the early 2000s when we witnessed the healthy coexistence of WC3, Age of Mythology, Rise of Nations, a maturing competitive Brood War, and a solid run of Star Wars strategy games (remember when we used to get those?) fell right before the cutoff of what looks, plays, and functions well enough to be readily carried over to present-day hardware. So there remains an imperative to bring as much of it as we can over to today's ecosystem, now that the PC experience has finally stabilized. This is one thing that has been going well for the genre, and the remasters need to keep coming.

Spoiler: 2. The end of the classic campaign

The business model for a classic, full-package, single-and-multi RTS experience doesn't look viable anymore. The writing was on the wall before StarCraft II was even into its first expansion. Two or three years ago I would have said that nobody but Blizzard would have the will and capability to do it, and now I no longer have confidence they'll do it either. If we get WC4 or SC3 in a decade's time because they've decided the RTS line is a legacy worth preserving, I think it will look quite different.

We're lucky we got SC2 at all in the form we did, as the industry climate changed so rapidly at the turn of the 2010s that a long-term, large-scale initiative like SC2's multi-expansion plan did not have the agility to keep up, and Blizzard was visibly scrambling. Now, if you've seen me in any other RTS threads you know how religiously I preach my belief that SC2 is far and away the best product Blizzard has turned out, and a lot of it came down to the audacity of its ambition: a full-sized single-player game for every faction, with a total unshackling of multiplayer from single-player unit design and balance so both ends could be independently tuned to perfection. But it took a while to get there, and you could tell early on that Blizzard regretted the scope of its commitment. We saw them scramble to throw together a map-publishing system that alienated everybody and effectively killed the customs scene, all to set up in advance for a monetization/profit-sharing scheme that misread the market and wasn't implemented for years. We saw them dial back the mission count in HotS/LotV when the WoL achievement numbers made them think that perhaps 30-ish missions were too many. We saw them take a crack at quality in-house mods only to get into a legal scrap over the DotA IP and spin off the project to a whole new game that was far more complete and polished than originally intended, but delivered years behind the curve. We saw them release LotV as a standalone product with no base-game requirement when it became apparent that stacking two expansions on a base game not called WoW was suicide (and notice that we now know they canned the second Diablo III expansion around that time). You saw them set up for in-game transactions and free-to-play to resuscitate the base, better late than never.

And you could break story down to all these particular inflection points, but the general idea is this: I think the inflexibility of such a bold and publicly visible plan as a "one full release per faction" mega-RTS scared them out of their wits. It didn't help that their one furtive exploration of a future potential model for campaign content releases, Nova Covert Ops, was killed off after one attempt to make room for efforts with a more consistent return on investment. The 80-or-90-mission, 3.5-part SC2 we ultimately got, following the tradition of The Frozen Throne in making a unique experience out of nearly every campaign map (and embellishing each one with multiple layers of hard modes and cleverly designed challenge achievements) is something we'll never see again. Big dreams like that just don't move quickly enough; they can't adapt to shifting conditions. And if SC2 is now a testbed for what a future RTS release model might look like—free-to-play multiplayer with paid campaign content for those who want it—the prognosis for full-scale, non-renewable single-player content is not good. Next to alternative casual modes like the wildly successful co-op in LotV, the return on investment isn't there.

Spoiler: 3. The challenge for multiplayer

The central design conundrum for the RTS genre is that multiplayer and single-player are really two kettles of fish, and a significant part of your audience will opt to play one at the exclusion of the other. One requires meticulous balance design and playtesting, and the other one requires intensive scenario construction that doesn't receive appreciation proportionate to the work. Usually the best you can hope for is that one of these shines (usually the multiplayer) and the other is a mildly entertaining afterthought.

What complicates things for anything entering the market now is that we're living in an era of streams, e-sports, automatic matchmaking, and ready access to a wealth of metagame knowledge. Scenes narrow down to a competitive core at a frightening pace, assuming they're able to sustain a core at all. The baseline understanding of multiplayer RTS concepts is far beyond what it used to be twenty years ago, even in lower leagues or ladder tiers.

It's very difficult to make a breakthrough in this environment because players who put in their time to learn a game want to be rewarded for their investment; they want to play against an active base. Player bases enter a death spiral if that confidence in the health of the game just isn't there, as there is so much else you could be playing for hundreds of hours instead. It's a perverse double-bind: people won't commit to a game if it doesn't have depth, but they also won't commit to a game if it does have depth but not enough of a community to reward deep exploration.

If you look at a game like Offworld Trading Company, it's in precisely this position. It's a wonderfully inventive RTS, full of concepts that depend on an assumption of human-to-human psychological warfare (though the AI is quite tough), and you'll probably never get to experience it to the full potential of its design. I haven't either. There isn't much single-player to speak of, even after a mountain of piecemeal DLC, and it's only so appealing to beat up on (or get beaten down by) bots in matches of varying asymmetry all day. It's a multiplayer experience through and through, but for a very small niche without the healthy backing of a casual substrate just content to fool around.

I don't remember worrying about this sort of thing—the absence of a vibrant scene or metagame—back in the days of Age of Mythology or Rise of Nations LAN parties. Nobody back then was any good, and nobody cared. It might just be that I'm no longer in the right social environment, and perhaps the lucky ones among you still are. But I do sense something has changed in general player expectations of what is or isn't worth their time.

Spoiler: 4. Alternatives and successors

If you want to build bases in a real-time setting all day, you owe it to yourself to play Factorio. It doesn't involve moving armies, but boy, does it involve absolutely everything else.

In all seriousness, I think that's where base-building has gone in a mid-budget, indie-dominated PC strategy market where unit micro has split off into the MOBA. It's gone to engineering games, pause-and-play colony sims, and to some extent survival crafting. And it hasn't escaped my notice that a builder's sandbox, fun and full of possibilities as it may be, doesn't offer much overlap with the pleasures of army management in a tightly bounded multiplayer skirmish or a mission-driven campaign. Macro-centric base-building systems are all over the place; what we lack is the combined macro/micro dynamic of the classic paradigm. Too many players have figured out that they want one but not the other; the ones who want both are still playing SC2.

TL;DR — Remasters are necessary. New games would be nice but the conditions are challenging. The DNA of classic RTS has dispersed. Bet on offbeat independent experiments of uncertain longevity, not on big revivals of classic IPs. Sigh a wistful sigh. This was the short version, I swear.

 

[SuikerBrood]

A topic dear to my heart. Most of my favorite games of all time are real time strategy games.

I think there is a chance of a survival of the genre. With the Switch as a capable machine for slow real time strategy games and all kinds of turn based strategy games. But most of all because we are getting some fantastic games this and next year.

- Warcraft 3 Reforged
- Age of Empires 2 & 3 remastered
- C&C & RA remasters

- Anno 1800
- Stronghold NEXT
- The Settlers
- Age of Empires 4

Those are big rts titles, some more focused on base building or economics, some more focused on the strategy aspect. So no, I don't think it's only remasters that keep it alive. And I hope many people will buy and enjoy these new titles in legendary franchises.

And let's not forget the indie landscape. I'm not the biggest fan of Northgard because the lack of depth, but I think they were on to something. Played it for a couple of hours and I hope they reiterate on it.

 

[Veidt]

Excellent point. MOBAs and such only take out a single aspect or two of what made RTS games great. Base building, resource management, building fortifications for defense, using largely different units to overcome obstacles... not enough games do this well anymore, as devs keep dumbing it down to lanes, fight minigames in small arenas or stupid timers to wait out for them MTXs. It's crazy how a relatively outdated game like the first Age Of Empires still feels much more complete and complex than most games sold off as strategy games nowadays.

Click to shrink...

Placing the blame on MOBAs doesn't paint the whole picture. There's naturally a small subset of devs that moved into MOBAs, but devs focusing on the most popular formula or trending sub-genre is hardly a new development. Another issue was big RTS studios either being closed (Ensemble, Westwood/EA LA, Big Huge Games and so on) or moving away from the genre (such as Blizzard and GSC Game World, although the latter has recently reopened and released Cossacks 3).

The main reason for the lack of classic RTS games is the fact RTS development has moved mostly towards two sub-genres: real-time tactics (Men of War, Company of Heroes, Wargame, Steel Division) and the city-building types (The Settlers, Anno, Northgard, They Are Billions). These sub-genres aren't new at all, they've been around for decades, but people were used to the big hitters in the traditional RTS space seeing most of the attention. As the number of classic RTS games kept shrinking, new studios weren't taking up their place.

You still get a lot of real-time strategy games per year, but very few are tackling the classic RTS balance of roughly equal parts base building, equal parts combat. You're also getting some original takes such as Offworld Trading Company, Tooth and Tail and Empire of the Undergrowth, so it's not like there's an absence of innovation or progress in the RTS space.

As for the lack of big singleplayer campaigns, that's certainly a reality. While a fair amount of RTTs still focus on campaigns, the city-builder types usually prioritize skirmish/sandbox modes, which means their campaigns tend to be nothing more than glorified tutorials.

 

[Deleted member 2254]

This is an issue that is quite dear to my heart, but I'll try to control myself and refrain from saying everything I want to say at once.

Let's see if I can keep it succinct. (No spoilers below; I'm only using the tags so my post doesn't invade your whole screen.)

Spoiler: 1. Remasters and preservation

In terms of preservation and continued playability, the RTS genre was uniquely screwed by the fact that it peaked at just about the worst time you could imagine. HD and widescreen were a few years off, 64-bit wasn't on anybody's mind, network code was in many cases dependent on third-party infrastructures like GameSpy that later went under, publishers ran around like chickens with their heads cut off to work out what to do with DRM before the emergence of the modern digital storefront consensus, the industry was en route to massive consolidation, the genre is inherently not that portable outside of the PC space, and let's not even talk about the state of the operating systems. That period in the early 2000s when we witnessed the healthy coexistence of WC3, Age of Mythology, Rise of Nations, a maturing competitive Brood War, and a solid run of Star Wars strategy games (remember when we used to get those?) fell right before the cutoff of what looks, plays, and functions well enough to be readily carried over to present-day hardware. So there remains an imperative to bring as much of it as we can over to today's ecosystem, now that the PC experience has finally stabilized. This is one thing that has been going well for the genre, and the remasters need to keep coming.

Spoiler: 2. The end of the classic campaign

The business model for a classic, full-package, single-and-multi RTS experience doesn't look viable anymore. The writing was on the wall before StarCraft II was even into its first expansion. Two or three years ago I would have said that nobody but Blizzard would have the will and capability to do it, and now I no longer have confidence they'll do it either. If we get WC4 or SC3 in a decade's time because they've decided the RTS line is a legacy worth preserving, I think it will look quite different.

We're lucky we got SC2 at all in the form we did, as the industry climate changed so rapidly at the turn of the 2010s that a long-term, large-scale initiative like SC2's multi-expansion plan did not have the agility to keep up, and Blizzard was visibly scrambling. Now, if you've seen me in any other RTS threads you know how religiously I preach my belief that SC2 is far and away the best product Blizzard has turned out, and a lot of it came down to the audacity of its ambition: a full-sized single-player game for every faction, with a total unshackling of multiplayer from single-player unit design and balance so both ends could be independently tuned to perfection. But it took a while to get there, and you could tell early on that Blizzard regretted the scope of its commitment. We saw them scramble to throw together a map-publishing system that alienated everybody and effectively killed the customs scene, all to set up in advance for a monetization/profit-sharing scheme that misread the market and wasn't implemented for years. We saw them dial back the mission count in HotS/LotV when the WoL achievement numbers made them think that perhaps 30-ish missions were too many. We saw them take a crack at quality in-house mods only to get into a legal scrap over the DotA IP and spin off the project to a whole new game that was far more complete and polished than originally intended, but delivered years behind the curve. We saw them release LotV as a standalone product with no base-game requirement when it became apparent that stacking two expansions on a base game not called WoW was suicide (and notice that we now know they canned the second Diablo III expansion around that time). You saw them set up for in-game transactions and free-to-play to resuscitate the base, better late than never.

And you could break story down to all these particular inflection points, but the general idea is this: I think the inflexibility of such a bold and publicly visible plan as a "one full release per faction" mega-RTS scared them out of their wits. It didn't help that their one furtive exploration of a future potential model for campaign content releases, Nova Covert Ops, was killed off after one attempt to make room for efforts with a more consistent return on investment. The 80-or-90-mission, 3.5-part SC2 we ultimately got, following the tradition of The Frozen Throne in making a unique experience out of nearly every campaign map (and embellishing each one with multiple layers of hard modes and cleverly designed challenge achievements) is something we'll never see again. Big dreams like that just don't move quickly enough; they can't adapt to shifting conditions. And if SC2 is now a testbed for what a future RTS release model might look like—free-to-play multiplayer with paid campaign content for those who want it—the prognosis for full-scale, non-renewable single-player content is not good. Next to alternative casual modes like the wildly successful co-op in LotV, the return on investment isn't there.

Spoiler: 3. The challenge for multiplayer

The central design conundrum for the RTS genre is that multiplayer and single-player are really two kettles of fish, and a significant part of your audience will opt to play one at the exclusion of the other. One requires meticulous balance design and playtesting, and the other one requires intensive scenario construction that doesn't receive appreciation proportionate to the work. Usually the best you can hope for is that one of these shines (usually the multiplayer) and the other is a mildly entertaining afterthought.

What complicates things for anything entering the market now is that we're living in an era of streams, e-sports, automatic matchmaking, and ready access to a wealth of metagame knowledge. Scenes narrow down to a competitive core at a frightening pace, assuming they're able to sustain a core at all. The baseline understanding of multiplayer RTS concepts is far beyond what it used to be twenty years ago, even in lower leagues or ladder tiers.

It's very difficult to make a breakthrough in this environment because players who put in their time to learn a game want to be rewarded for their investment; they want to play against an active base. Player bases enter a death spiral if that confidence in the health of the game just isn't there, as there is so much else you could be playing for hundreds of hours instead. It's a perverse double-bind: people won't commit to a game if it doesn't have depth, but they also won't commit to a game if it does have depth but not enough of a community to reward deep exploration.

If you look at a game like Offworld Trading Company, it's in precisely this position. It's a wonderfully inventive RTS, full of concepts that depend on an assumption of human-to-human psychological warfare (though the AI is quite tough), and you'll probably never get to experience it to the full potential of its design. I haven't either. There isn't much single-player to speak of, even after a mountain of piecemeal DLC, and it's only so appealing to beat up on (or get beaten down by) bots in matches of varying asymmetry all day. It's a multiplayer experience through and through, but for a very small niche without the healthy backing of a casual substrate just content to fool around.

I don't remember worrying about this sort of thing—the absence of a vibrant scene or metagame—back in the days of Age of Mythology or Rise of Nations LAN parties. Nobody back then was any good, and nobody cared. It might just be that I'm no longer in the right social environment, and perhaps the lucky ones among you still are. But I do sense something has changed in general player expectations of what is or isn't worth their time.

Spoiler: 4. Alternatives and successors

If you want to build bases in a real-time setting all day, you owe it to yourself to play Factorio. It doesn't involve moving armies, but boy, does it involve absolutely everything else.

In all seriousness, I think that's where base-building has gone in a mid-budget, indie-dominated PC strategy market where unit micro has split off into the MOBA. It's gone to engineering games, pause-and-play colony sims, and to some extent survival crafting. And it hasn't escaped my notice that a builder's sandbox, fun and full of possibilities as it may be, doesn't offer much overlap with the pleasures of army management in a tightly bounded multiplayer skirmish or a mission-driven campaign. Macro-centric base-building systems are all over the place; what we lack is the combined macro/micro dynamic of the classic paradigm. Too many players have figured out that they want one but not the other; the ones who want both are still playing SC2.

TL;DR — Remasters are necessary. New games would be nice but the conditions are challenging. The DNA of classic RTS has dispersed. Bet on offbeat independent experiments of uncertain longevity, not on big revivals of classic IPs. Sigh a wistful sigh. This was the short version, I swear.

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Lovely post, thank you. It sums up much of the things I thought of, but I haven't been following the genre too closely this decade bar playing the occasional remaster or classic, so I wasn't aware of everything. StarCraft 2 is something I briefly played but I personally have always been on the WarCraft-side out of the two, so that only interested to a certain degree. I'd pay large sums of money for a WarCraft 4 with modern graphics and the same amount of content and variety of 3, but it just doesn't really seem viable at this point. Not in the way that game was made, anyway.

 

[Vela]

Beggars can't be choosers. No one really makes RTS games anymore, at least ones with a singleplayer campaign. Only Homeworld Deserts of Kharak (excellent game by the way) falls within a classic RTS game, but I don't think it did that well.

 

[AlsoZ]

Only Homeworld Deserts of Kharak (excellent game by the way) falls within a classic RTS game, but I don't think it did that well.

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I like the Homeworld idea of having a consistent army that moves across the land, but other than placing scanners and defensive turrets there wasn't really anything in terms of "base building" to that game and it lacked the third dimension of Homeworld.
As much as I enjoy the atmosphere of rolling aircraft carriers producing armies in the desert, I only found it "okay".

 

[Budi]

Unfortunately RTS is one of the genres gaming community kinda left behind. They can't compete with the heavy hitters of today, especially since console ports are quite tricky to pull-off. So it's understandable that the big studios aren't so eager to work on new games. But I'd love to see new proper Warcraft and C&C games. Remasters are little bit of comfort atleast.

 

[-Amon-]

While i adored the old classics and i would like to play remasters of some of them i must say that i would really prefer to see new games in the genre, and by far.

 

[Deleted member 2254]

Unfortunately RTS is one of the genres gaming community kinda left behind. They can't compete with the heavy hitters of today, especially since console ports are quite tricky to pull-off. So it's understandable that the big studios aren't so eager to work on new games. But I'd love to see new proper Warcraft and C&C games. Remasters are little bit of comfort atleast.

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It's a genre that failed to stay relevant in an everchanging gaming community, while many other genres like fighting games or shooters keep on going on. But FPS games in the 2010s are nothing like the ones released in the 90's, a couple games aside that cater intentionally to that old school philosophy, in part or entirely (Doom 2016, Serious Sam 3, DUSK, Shadow Warrior, etc.). RTS games did try to change every now and then, but most people weren't into those changes, usually because they were the wrong changes (see C&C4). People adored the RPG elements in it in games like WarCraft 3, I feel like that could have been the natural evolution, unfortunately for RTS fans, if anything, it led to the MOBAs which combine elements of the two but also take away a lot (proper resource management, base building, handling tons of units at the same time, etc.).

RTS games are a major time and effort commitment, and that's the kind of thing that is a bit hard to sell nowadays. MOBAs are also rather hardcore in their skill ceiling, but at its core, they are extremely easy to understand: 3 lanes, a dozen or so heroes brawl it out on them among towers and creeps and you have to take down the enemy base, and the resources you gather are used to get stronger. To even have a decent chance of not getting owned in 5 minutes in an RTS, you need to understand the game's logic, buildings, units, which at the very least requires plenty of AI matches or a lengthy campaign. I feel that it might be one of the factors the genre died out a bit.

 

[NoWayOut]

Sadly RTS are going to end up like point and click adventures. The market is just not there today.

 

[KillLaCam]

Slightly disappointed but I'd rather have remasters than something trying to go after moba players

 

[Budi]

It's a genre that failed to stay relevant in an everchanging gaming community, while many other genres like fighting games or shooters keep on going on. But FPS games in the 2010s are nothing like the ones released in the 90's, a couple games aside that cater intentionally to that old school philosophy, in part or entirely (Doom 2016, Serious Sam 3, DUSK, Shadow Warrior, etc.). RTS games did try to change every now and then, but most people weren't into those changes, usually because they were the wrong changes (see C&C4). People adored the RPG elements in it in games like WarCraft 3, I feel like that could have been the natural evolution, unfortunately for RTS fans, if anything, it led to the MOBAs which combine elements of the two but also take away a lot (proper resource management, base building, handling tons of units at the same time, etc.).

RTS games are a major time and effort commitment, and that's the kind of thing that is a bit hard to sell nowadays. MOBAs are also rather hardcore in their skill ceiling, but at its core, they are extremely easy to understand: 3 lanes, a dozen or so heroes brawl it out on them among towers and creeps and you have to take down the enemy base, and the resources you gather are used to get stronger. To even have a decent chance of not getting owned in 5 minutes in an RTS, you need to understand the game's logic, buildings, units, which at the very least requires plenty of AI matches or a lengthy campaign. I feel that it might be one of the factors the genre died out a bit.

Click to shrink...

Sadly RTS are going to end up like point and click adventures. The market is just not there today.

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Yeah I feel adventure games evolved to this Telltale / Dontnod style of games. Of course there's still traditional point n click adventures made, but those aren't nearly as big profile as Walking Dead and Life is Strange are. Unavowed in example barely gets reviewed by games media, even though it seems to be really great game. Thimbleweed Park had it better atleast, it helps to be multiplat and helmed by Ron Gilbert. In a sense adventure games had to be "dumbed" down a bit to be relevant. They got rid of most of the puzzles, but the story flows better and they incorporated choice & concequence.

Personally I wasn't that big fan of the hero units in Warcraft 3, but I've played the hell out of Dota 2 and Heroes of the Storm. But in WC3 it felt bit like a disruption to what I loved, if that makes any sense (maybe not).

 

[SuikerBrood]

Yeah I feel adventure games evolved to this Telltale / Dontnod style of games. Of course there's still traditional point n click adventures made, but those aren't nearly as big profile as Walking Dead and Life is Strange are. Unavowed in example barely gets reviewed by games media, even though it seems to be really great game. Thimbleweed Park had it better atleast, it helps to be multiplat and helmed by Ron Gilbert. In a sense adventure games had to be "dumbed" down a bit to be relevant. They got rid of most of the puzzles, but the story flows better and they incorporated choice & concequence.

Personally I wasn't that big fan of the hero units in Warcraft 3, but I've played the hell out of Dota 2 and Heroes of the Storm. But in WC3 it felt bit like a disruption to what I loved, if that makes any sense (maybe not).

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I see the point. Personally I feel the hero units in Warcraft 3 give it more depth. And it gave the custom gaming community way more options. The amount of RPG's, survival games and all kinds of stuff that spawned from that game is insane.

The battles in normal mode are very hero focused tho. But I love the balance between 'micro' and 'macro' in Warcraft 3. More so than in Age of Empires or StarCraft.

 

[Gelf]

I'd like new games but I'm happy with remasters. All thats really important to me in this genre is base building mechanics and single player campaigns, at least with remasters of the classics I should get that again.

Also I'm gonna keep saying this when these threads pop up, if you want an old school base building C&C style RTS, go play Grey Goo now if you havent already.

 

[Deleted member 2254]

I'd like new games but I'm happy with remasters. All thats really important to me in this genre is base building mechanics and single player campaigns, at least with remasters of the classics I should get that again.

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Good thing there's custom maps and mods keeping the classics alive, so you can avoid playing the same missions over and over again. But it's so disappointing that a game like WarCraft 3 may never happen again, as in a major triple-A studio devolving years and massive budget with advanced tech and such to deliver a massive single player campaign with voice actors, a very customizeable skirmish mode (although it had no difficulty options at launch, shockingly), a very comprehensive editor, a complete multiplayer that allows for leagues, private matches, custom games... all while delivering rather innovative and excellent RTS mechanics. I just... don't see this happening anymore, not anytime soon anyway. Not without microtransactions, not without timers, not without some concession towards casuals, not with a budget comparable to today's third person action games. Sad, really.

 

[SuikerBrood]

Good thing there's custom maps and mods keeping the classics alive, so you can avoid playing the same missions over and over again. But it's so disappointing that a game like WarCraft 3 may never happen again, as in a major triple-A studio devolving years and massive budget with advanced tech and such to deliver a massive single player campaign with voice actors, a very customizeable skirmish mode (although it had no difficulty options at launch, shockingly), a very comprehensive editor, a complete multiplayer that allows for leagues, private matches, custom games... all while delivering rather innovative and excellent RTS mechanics. I just... don't see this happening anymore, not anytime soon anyway. Not without microtransactions, not without timers, not without some concession towards casuals, not with a budget comparable to today's third person action games. Sad, really.

Click to shrink...

For me, this came close to that kind of budget:

 

[Deleted member 2254]

For me, this came close to that kind of budget:

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The Halo Wars games sit in such a weird spot for me. I have one of them installed on PC, the other on Xbox One X. I kinda want to get immersed into them, but I feel like playing such an RTS on Xbox with a controller would feel weird, likewise I feel that playing a console-ish RTS on PC feels wrong. I just never get the urge to play it, but it looks rather gorgeous all around. Plus I think the online population, whatever's left of it, is now the ultrahardcore. However, if there's a Halo Wars 3 and they launch it day and date on Game Pass and Play Anywhere... that may change everything for me, 'cause I'd be there surely.

 

[Hella]

This is speaking as a Blizzard RTS fan (they were my gateway in the RTS genre, way back on the Nintendo 64), but I'm fine with them living on by remasters. Blizzard basically killed Starcraft when they released Starcraft 2, by removing the best features from their previous games: a good map editor and the social platform Battle.net. The fact I had to come to terms with is, Blizzard is never going to make that kind of game again, so the least they can do is allow their legacy to live on.

I'm kind of an odd class of RTS player though--I'm not there for competitive scenes, just the campaigns and custom games. So when I'm seeking RTS-like gameplay, stuff like Total War gives me enough new experiences these days, while having a strategy layer that I enjoy more. (To be honest, I never actually liked RTS gameplay--it was the weird mishmash of stuff Blizzard brought in with it that was the draw.)

 

[SuikerBrood]

I'm worried about Warcraft 3 Reforged by the way. The way they'll merge the old Battle.net with the new, the way all kinds of custom campaigns and maps will break, etc.

It's going to be a rough ride.

 

[Deleted member 2254]

I'm worried about Warcraft 3 Reforged by the way. The way they'll merge the old Battle.net with the new, the way all kinds of custom campaigns and maps will break, etc.

It's going to be a rough ride.

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As long as Sheep Tag works I'm ready to accept anything :P

 

[SuikerBrood]

The Halo Wars games sit in such a weird spot for me. I have one of them installed on PC, the other on Xbox One X. I kinda want to get immersed into them, but I feel like playing such an RTS on Xbox with a controller would feel weird, likewise I feel that playing a console-ish RTS on PC feels wrong. I just never get the urge to play it, but it looks rather gorgeous all around. Plus I think the online population, whatever's left of it, is now the ultrahardcore. However, if there's a Halo Wars 3 and they launch it day and date on Game Pass and Play Anywhere... that may change everything for me, 'cause I'd be there surely.

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It's a difficult decision to make for MS. After playing Halo Wars 2 I think it's good enough for a pc rts. It has enough depth to keep you engaged and the starting cutscenes are cunning edge. But giving it more depth would ruin it for console players.

Wish they made a third installment. Would love to continue with the adventures of the Spirit of Fire.

 

[Vela]

I like the Homeworld idea of having a consistent army that moves across the land, but other than placing scanners and defensive turrets there wasn't really anything in terms of "base building" to that game and it lacked the third dimension of Homeworld.
As much as I enjoy the atmosphere of rolling aircraft carriers producing armies in the desert, I only found it "okay".

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It excelled where the vast majority of RTS games fail: writing, narrative, and atmosphere.

 

[PeskyToaster]

Luckily Total War still lives and, by I think pretty much every measure, is the best it has ever been. We're going to be getting a lot of Three Kingdoms info soon.

 

[Ishmae1]

I'm not going to turn this into an interview, so don't ask but:

Age IV is in development (keep the faith, TC!), as most of you in this thread know. It's a PC RTS through and through. It upholds Age's approach to RTS games.

Interpret that as you will. =)

 

[Deleted member 2254]

I'm not going to turn this into an interview, so don't ask but:

Age IV is in development (keep the faith, TC!), as most of you in this thread know. It's a PC RTS through and through. It upholds Age's approach to RTS games.

Interpret that as you will. =)

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That sounds excellent! Of course I'd gladly have it on Xbox too with KB+M but knowing it's PC-centric is good enough to me :)

 

[QuixoticNeutral]

Lovely post, thank you. It sums up much of the things I thought of, but I haven't been following the genre too closely this decade bar playing the occasional remaster or classic, so I wasn't aware of everything. StarCraft 2 is something I briefly played but I personally have always been on the WarCraft-side out of the two, so that only interested to a certain degree. I'd pay large sums of money for a WarCraft 4 with modern graphics and the same amount of content and variety of 3, but it just doesn't really seem viable at this point. Not in the way that game was made, anyway.

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I think the best scenario for WC4 that we can hope for will probably look like this, imitating a lot of what they eventually settled on with SC2 but designed to accommodate it from the ground up:

- Free-to-play multiplayer with individually purchasable campaigns per faction, possibly episodic (but a flat fee to get access to it all in one package/pass, with the usual optional Blizzard perks like a physical collector's box and a few cosmetic items for multiplayer)
- Multiplayer balance/design overhauls on a completely separate schedule from single-player content launches (no traditional "expansions" as we know them)
- Relatively short campaigns, nothing on the scale of SC2 but maybe comparable to TFT, and only for as long as it's considered viable
- Considerable cosmetic monetization to keep people playing, possibly with loot boxes
- Heavy emphasis on an endless casual mode (see SC2 co-op) as the main site of faction/mission design, so people who aren't in it for competitive multiplayer will continue to play and pay
- An accessible editor like WC3's, but with many of the same back-end editing/publishing restrictions that we see in SC2
- Continued support for SC2 as a prestige e-sport and "standard" multiplayer RTS (let's be honest, in current conditions, no competitive 1v1 RTS will ever have it better) while WC4 is freer to do something more experimental as a second branch of design, like WC3, that avoids further cannibalizing or splitting the competitive base; cautious support for competitive WC4

But even this is a lot of wishful thinking and industry fan fiction. It will depend a lot on what happens with Reforged. And to be honest, I think Reforged will primarily sell as an accessible campaign experience for the WoW generation. It's not going to receive serious e-sports support when Blizzard is spread too thin already and the audience for WC3's standard multiplayer is even smaller than SC:R's; Grubby isn't going to carry all of that on his back. It will probably be lightly monetized as a platform for paid cosmetic skins and cross-promotional bonuses. And I doubt the old customs scene will make a big resurgence, given my experience with WC3 in its current preparatory state, although it will be nice if we get a vibrant co-op tower defence community going again (as nothing has ever replaced WC3/TFT in that department) while all the DotA players are off elsewhere instead of clogging up the UMS list.

With the departure of Mike Morhaime and the shuffling of their top RTS veterans to what sound like not-very-RTS-like projects, though, I fear that Blizzard is no longer in the hands of people who remember what it was like for RTS to be the central pillar of their brand's prestige. The generation for which Blizzard and RTS are synonymous just isn't in charge anymore. And even if we do see WC4, I sort of expect them to be dumb enough to kill support for SC2, then fail to migrate its players as the de facto multiplayer RTS base (splitting and dispersing them everywhere instead) when WC4 doesn't turn out to be the kind of 1v1 experience that a StarCraft-style RTS player is looking for. But what they'll probably do, I'm guessing, is passively run SC2 as a well-tested RTS platform (until microtransactional packages like the War Chests drop like a rock and fail to hit targets), diddle around with mobile, and just not release new games—basically what Valve did with TF2 for half a decade with no competition, no external pressure, and no plan.

I'm kind of an odd class of RTS player though--I'm not there for competitive scenes, just the campaigns and custom games. So when I'm seeking RTS-like gameplay, stuff like Total War gives me enough new experiences these days, while having a strategy layer that I enjoy more. (To be honest, I never actually liked RTS gameplay--it was the weird mishmash of stuff Blizzard brought in with it that was the draw.)

Click to shrink...

I was the same kind of player all the way up until SC2, when I was unexpectedly hooked by the e-sports side and the ladder. I honestly never thought that would happen, given my previous experience with RTS (Blizzard and otherwise), and if a few things had gone even slightly differently, I would be in your exact position, feeling like I had been left out. I was quite deep in the early SC2 customs scene back in the WoL era and the problems for this player segment were apparent even in the beta.

That said, I'd encourage you to give SC2's co-op a spin if you haven't already. It caters to precisely the old campaign-and-customs crowd that just wanted to build bases, move creatively modded armies around, and make everything explode in a low-pressure, asymmetric comp-stomp setting. There's no real story and it's still fundamentally the old RTS mishmash in 20-to-30-minute chunks, but the mission selection is large enough at this point that it's pretty much a full campaign that you do in a random order, and some of the newer commander designs are incredibly inventive, catering to a whole spectrum of play styles. And the queues are instant. The pace may or may not be right for you, but it scratches the toybox army itch like nothing else; the developers themselves were totally caught off guard by how many lapsed RTS players it brought back.

I'm worried about Warcraft 3 Reforged by the way. The way they'll merge the old Battle.net with the new, the way all kinds of custom campaigns and maps will break, etc.

It's going to be a rough ride.

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I'm actually not too worried (about that part, anyway; I have different concerns about Reforged). The way that SC:R broke some old SC1/BW custom maps was a pretty specific edge case that shouldn't recur on a similar scale with the new and enhanced WC3 WorldEdit. Mainly, as a customs player, the main thing I'd be worried about is the existing bugginess of a lot of classic maps; every customs player remembers what it was like to have a desync or server split where suddenly half the players drop out at once. It's to our benefit that WC3 maps are easy to fix and republish in a format that isn't locked to editing (without some hackiness, anyway); yes, that's how we had all the version control problems that gave us hundreds of competing fan edits of Wintermaul, but it's also what will rescue a lot of the old designs as needed. On the editor's side, SC2 made a gigantic mistake with the region-locking and encrypted publishing that were all intended to give original map creators full control (and possible monetization, they thought) but just ended up annoying everybody at once.

As for Battle.net, integration with their current services is a major positive reason for picking up Reforged at all, and systems for matchmaking or automated tournaments are already in the game; it's not an SC:R situation where we still don't have a 2v2 queue because it never existed in the first place and has to be built from scratch.

I'm not going to turn this into an interview, so don't ask but:

Age IV is in development (keep the faith, TC!), as most of you in this thread know. It's a PC RTS through and through. It upholds Age's approach to RTS games.

Interpret that as you will. =)

Click to shrink...

Thanks for the note of reassurance. Whether AoE is our main flavour of RTS or not, I think all of us here want to see it succeed.

 

[SuikerBrood]

I'm not going to turn this into an interview, so don't ask but:

Age IV is in development (keep the faith, TC!), as most of you in this thread know. It's a PC RTS through and through. It upholds Age's approach to RTS games.

Interpret that as you will. =)

Click to shrink...

Much appreciated.

 

[Deleted member 16136]

Always got the impression most RTS were predominantly played solo (Campaign/Skirmish) or online comp stomp with friends. At least that's what everyone I knew who played them did. Never saw huge lists of games for PVP, every time I tried it I got slaughtered within minutes and stopped trying. I think most just enjoyed building a base, a huge army, then going on the warpath in their own time.


At least, that was the charm with C&C, felt like the mainstream RTS, everyone knew of it and played it at the time.

 

[SuikerBrood]

Always got the impression most RTS were predominantly played solo (Campaign/Skirmish) or online comp stomp with friends. At least that's what everyone I knew who played them did. Never saw huge lists of games for PVP, every time I tried it I got slaughtered within minutes and stopped trying. I think most just enjoyed building a base, a huge army, then going on the warpath in their own time.


At least, that was the charm with C&C, felt like the mainstream RTS, everyone knew of it and played it at the time.

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Competitive rts was quite big back in the day. StarCraft and Warcraft III were huge e-Sports games. And StarCraft II had its high too.

AoE2HD had a big tournament last year.

A well balanced rts is great in multiplayer.

 

[UshiromiyaEva]

i love Age of Empires II so it getting full-sized expansions with new content and assets was well appreciated, i'm still looking forward to Age of Empires IV whenever it may come

 

[Syf]

I enjoy the remasters but still want new entries that retain the core mechanics but modernize them, a lot like StarCraft 2 did. It's very good to read in here that AoE 4 will be a new take on the same core design. Looking forward to it.

 

[Miaus]

I love RTS games and hope Age IV is great but probably there will never be a game in the RTS genre as good as SC:BW and that's fine. It virtually is multiplayer perfection and it's not like there are multiple dev teams working on similar games to improve the old formulas.