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Age of Empires designer believes RTS games need to finally evolve after decades of stagnation
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this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2024
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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
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.
I swear, standardization kills fun and creativity.
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).
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...