RTS (Real-time Strategy) General - Gookclick anon can't find us here.

Next Highlight
DefinitelyNotMe

DefinitelyNotMe

Just your generic slav
True & Honest Fan
kiwifarms.net
Joined
Dec 21, 2020
For the past 10-13 years (arguably since launch of the starcraft 2) RTS being in a state of purgatory when a genre as a whole technically existed either via a mediocare game launch or mods and custom campaings for older titles.
But being technically alive isn't exactly the desirable outcome for anyone who likes to play them.
However, we may be at the end of this gray zone beyond life and death since a row of new real-time strategies with gameplay that resembles classic games like C&C, "Age of X" games, and war/starcraft.

Here's the list of the ones that keep my eye on:
Stormgate - Frost Giant is a studio that has a lot of ex-Blizzard employees that recently entered its open beta. And so far its being pretty ass: pathfinding issues, serious clash between artstyle and story, units in general look like they are some cheap toys, blatantly/rehash stolen Warcraft 3 story, and not so reasonable pricing for a fundraised game. Maybe it will get better, but the hope is low.
Age of Mythology Retold - Already out, and it is a faithful remake of the original game with some senceable gameplay changes; I haven't seen any criticism whatsoever. Played it, beat it, can recommend, especially if you played the original.
DORF RTS - Okay, now we are talking about some thing that looks cool as shit. It looks like Red Alert 2 and Tiberian Sun, with a big focus on explosions and ridiculous units.
Tempest Rising - C&C tiberium look alike, not just in gamplay and visuals but in story as well. Demo is out, and it's alright, snappy, and probably will be fun.
ZeroSpace - an RTS that supposedly heavely inspired by Wings of Liberty campaing of StarCraft 2 (the best one) with branching plot and decion making, looks kinda cheap and all the promotional art looks like from some mobile game, but who knows maybe itll turn out to be fun. (honestly i know about it only because of Grant)

We might just be back RTS bros
btw it should be pretty obvious that i dont care about multiplayer in any way whatsoever
 
Last edited:
  • Informative
  • Like
  • Winner
Reactions: dead76, Backpack Knight, King Vidiot and 8 others
Looking forward to DORF personally, mainly because Sseth sparked my interest in whacky 2d isometric RTS games.
 
I admire your optimism. RTS is a dead genre, and there it will stay. The normie who might have been interested in a full RTS is just going to play any one of the watered down versions available like ASSFAGGOTS or Real Time Tactical games. Stormgate was the final nail in the coffin for my hope of a RTS revival. It's never gonna happen.
 
  • Like
  • Feels
Reactions: Backpack Knight, Big Brown Schlub, 85CentSoda and 4 others
Speaking of Stromgate, since I played it the last time, there were 2 big updates (2nd one was yesterday).
They said that they fucked up with the artwork and were willing to change it, although I don't think they can do much realistically.
some performance changes and campaign redesigns and stuff no one really cares about.
Idk, I think the problems lay waaay deeper, then that.
sure they might change models a bit, record propper sound effects, etc but story will still need a significant rewrite, and every unit will still feel like a Saturday cartoon where every gun shoots lasers instead of bullets.
They just dont seem cool or fun to use
 

Attachments

  • 1730287519209.png
    1730287519209.png
    4 MB · Views: 23
Last edited:
I like dorf, I'll probably play it if the size is small and it can run on 15 year old pcs. I hope they don't invest much on rts games, it's one of those genres which can survive purely on good ai and gameplay, doesn't need high fidelity graphics and cool looking interfaces. That's the problem with all these high budget looking rtses like homeworld, CoH and AoE4.
Rembrandt said:
Looking forward to DORF personally, mainly because Sseth sparked my interest in whacky 2d isometric RTS games.
Click to expand...
Sseth really got me into the habit of scouring Wikipedia pages and gog trash to find games with good systems. He recommends the best systemic games in history. God bless him the retarded swede.
 
All of the older Command and Conquers are still fairly viable online and off. Halo wars rts is fairly decent while 343i or whatever fag name their calling themselves now cannot seem to make a good Halo game the Halo Wars series has yet to disappoint me. Its been a while we may get a third entry.
 
  • Agree
Reactions: Backpack Knight and 56 others
AOE2DE and MsGames' great love for former RTS games might be to blame for the RTS resurgence.

If Ms buys Activision we might see a proper WC3/SCBW revival as well.

Haven't seen many great RTS myself. ZeroK will always be a gem. Relic classics are awesome!
 
Sins of a Solar Empire 2 is out, it's solid, not what I hoped for in a sequel, but fun.

I played the tempest rising beta and I was not happy with it. Units too big/map lanes too small. This was an issue for me that was getting worse as the C&C universe continued releasing titles. In red alert 2, tib sun, and generals, you had a lot of room on the map to maneuver units. In the TR beta, your shit was jammed into a small area/lanes.

I could write a whole sperg post about what else I didnt like about TR as a huge C&C fan if anyone cares

Edit: Damn DORF looks pretty interesting, RA2 is probably one of my most played games.
 
Last edited:
  • Informative
  • Like
Reactions: SIMIΔN and Tourniquet Man
RTS is such a great genre. I remember when Twitch was new and the name itself was fucking cringe, Starcraft 2 took up 80% of streams at peak hours. We'd all have our own race which dictated which korean we cheered for while the americunts fucked around and never became 'real' players on the stage. Fast forward several years and out of fucking nowhere, Red Bull Wololo #1. I don't recall if it happened when the remasters were being released or what, but you'd suddenly see this well-decorated esports stage with hosts and pause music and and graphics with a bunch of literal boomers playing the one game they only ever played but professionally.

RTS is like fighting games: Pure skill, a solo road for a zero to become a hero. No rng, no luck, no bad spawns. The perfect narrative structure for a streamer to follow. Yet, dead. Cause it's just that. Nobody wants to play games that don't slip them a win here and there. Very few truly get hooked on that aspect of "I can grind this for 3 hours every day and double my win chances every week".

So why? What is the "Modern fighting controls" that'll make RTS easily accessible? TotalBiscuit actually did release his mod/addon for SC2 trying to do this, but it only really had shit like "every unit comes out in a pair of 2 with weaker stats" to make wars more bombastic; auto-splitting workers, and (sensibly) not locking up resources because you queued 5 workers, but use the resources as they progress. Aaaand it sucked. Fucking bombed and people moved on.

There's games like Northgard that are RTS at its core but slightly less daunting and hexagon-zone based. Got god knows how many DLCs yet Ive never heard of anyone playing it. Both those two new RTS games also trying to make RTS games more approachable fucking flunked too. Maybe the genre is just doomed? I do see the odd vtuber or youtuber make a 50 min video on their accidental RTS romance and it's so inspiring, only to realize "Oh right I have no RTS friends to keep pushing me and it'll become a Discord-only game cause it's a dead genre". Shame.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Quioui, dead76, Backpack Knight and 1 other person
⋖ cørdion ⋗ said:
RTS is like fighting games: Pure skill, a solo road for a zero to become a hero. No rng, no luck, no bad spawns. The perfect narrative structure for a streamer to follow. Yet, dead. Cause it's just that. Nobody wants to play games that don't slip them a win here and there. Very few truly get hooked on that aspect of "I can grind this for 3 hours every day and double my win chances every week".
Click to expand...
At its core, RTS games were always single-player centric. Sure, the 00s and early 10s had an immense focus on the PVP aspect of RTS games, but it had always been a minority crowd of the games, and doomed to always lose casuals to ASSFAGGOTS or mobile games, and the pros to the eternal evergreen giants of Starcraft and AOE2.

No, the popularity of the RTS genre had everything to do with casuals who enjoyed the basebuilding and commander aspect, sprinkled in with a servicable story that advanced the plot and provided you with an excuse to mash armies against other armies. How many still quote C&C Kane and Starcraft Raynor? Or the memeable AOM "prostagma"? Or even the oft-quoted Warcraft III story that sets up WoW? Modern RTS games keep dropping the ball in this aspect and so the genre will remain dead for the foreseeable future.
 
  • Agree
  • Like
Reactions: dead76, YouDoNotHaveTheRight, TrinityReformed and 2 others
Evil Peter Griffin said:
They used to work for Blizzard. What do you expect?
Click to expand...
SC2 had some great units, mostly terran though, like viking and reaper that had fun mechanics tid to them
siege tank is peak unit design of corse but that would be cheating since its just SC1 unit that was sraight up ported to the sequel
but if you look at the Stromgate version of the tank (which called atlas i think) its just kinda lame
it has to seige then charge the ball when it sees the enemy then ball of energy has to travel to the target and then it deals damage that looks like a water baloon poping
meanwhile tank just seiges snaps to the target and makes big fucking explosion that gibs enemies and sends them flying.
plus it had a lot of special death animations deppending on what enemy killed it, like being slashed in half or being burned to death with acid or fire.
 
Burning Bridge said:
I admire your optimism. RTS is a dead genre, and there it will stay. The normie who might have been interested in a full RTS is just going to play any one of the watered down versions available like ASSFAGGOTS or Real Time Tactical games. Stormgate was the final nail in the coffin for my hope of a RTS revival. It's never gonna happen.
Click to expand...
This. There's a reason the only RTS games that are alive and have healthy communities today are just old games that have been remade and get regular content updates, like Age of Empires 2 and 3, and most recently Mythology. Nobody can really recapture the magic that the old RTS games had.
 
⋖ cørdion ⋗ said:
RTS is like fighting games
Click to expand...
with one exception
In fighting games matches last for like 5 minutes, and you can spot your mistake easily.
In rts whoever games go from 20 to 40 minutes, and to understand your mistake, youll have to watch the replay to understand what and where shit went wrong.
and that's obviously way more time-consuming and takes much more extra effort to do.
 
  • Like
Reactions: dead76 and Kane Lives
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back