Why did people stop playing RTS games?

Why did people stop playing RTS games?

Skill ceiling is too high for the size of the niche the genre appeals to.

People realized they were shit and now only casuals with no taste play them.

I feel like the skill ceiling only matters for people near the skill ceiling and most people are so far from being near that ceiling in almost all genres that it shouldn't matter.

I think they're just too hard for developers to make without being unbalanced pieces of shit.

I I play a few different rts games, but at this point with my kids and work and life, I don't have time to sit down for a long game.

Yeah yeah, I know I'm becoming a fucking casual.

They didn't. E-sports was an Asian meme.

The original RTS fans have always been more interested in campaigns, co-op comp stomps and casual multiplayer. It's a niche genre.

Cause pc is dead as a gaming platform.

People stopped making them.

Never saw a casual playing Starcraft or Civilization.

I still play SC2 fairly regularly

Because they stopped making them. The later CnC games were garbage or mediocre at best.

>People stopped making them.

>Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak
>Greygoo
>8bit Hordes
>Planetary Annihilation
>Cossacks 3
>Tooth and Tail
>Ashes of the Singularity

Then there are several rts/rtt hybrid games like COH, and the total war series...

I just started playing the DOW series. It was pretty overwhelming at first but Im slowly learning how to micromanage. It just takes more time to git gud than other genres.

3D was a mistake.
>Red Alert 3 killed Command & Conquer.
>Z: Steel Soldiers killed Z.

They stopped making good ones.

because developers kept releasing shitty ones so people stopped playing them, ultimately made developers stop making them.

I still play them but only old ones.

>Ashes
>bad
>Cossacks 3
>bad
Pls fuck off

Most rts players realized they were shit at it

Those who don't, went to Chess or Go

>nostalgia
Because you can't define good.

2 out of 7 seems like a good ratio to keep the genre alive to you?

Normies don't like to have to think.

>mfw Age Of Empires IV probably won't live up to the hype and die soon after release

Focus on speed and not on strategy.

I'm really disappointed that by all accounts Dawn of War III sucked since I missed out on 1 and 2 when they were hot and was looking forwards to new dumb /tg/ memes.

literally what are these

Grey Goo and the Homeworld prequel are pretty good too though, just don't have the marketing or nostalgia appeal.

Soulstorm is still actively played to this day
DoW2 is also active with the Elite Mod, nobody plays vanilla except Last Stand since it's an unbalanced broken mess

This. I'm not going to remember a shitload of macros and build orders just to be average.

Gaming became popular and the gates opened fully to allow idiots in to participate.

Its made by R*lic.

E-sports and APMfags were the cancer that killed the RTS.

Play Original War.

>lelic making aoe4
truly the darkest of timelines.

RTS games are more fun when you and your opponent are both shit at them. Like, you and your friend decide to just play one once in a while, that's when they're fun. All the magic dissipates when you get good at the game.

That just proves my point. All of that is what would've been bargain-bin-tier trash 15 years ago. It belongs among stuff like dark colony, 7th legion, dark reign, etc. Totally unmemorable if not for how nothing that isn't crap is being made. Even shit like Outpost 2 put more effort into it 20 years ago than any of these did with two decades worth of technology and experience.

I play empire earth from time to time, that game allows me to turtle, God I love turtling in RTS games.

>RTS
>Civilization

How can you say ashes is good with a straight face? The game makes even supcom2 look like an inspired masterpiece. I don't even understand why anybody would play ashes.

>relic
don't fucking remind me

I didn't see any that interested me after DOW. I play the total war games quite a bit still though

What are some other RTS' that allow you to turtle?

E-Sports killed it. Focus on APM and memorizing build orders instead of strategy killed MP and less and less emphasis on good SP until SP became non-existant or throwaway at best is what killed SP.
That way you killed the only two reasons why people cared about RTS.

Literally any RTS with basebuilding.

So?
AoE3 was hot garbage. Last time the series was good it was 2000. Which was 17 years ago. People still waiting for new AoE at this point baffle me to no end. What the fuck you are even expecting?

I'm not even mad, I, II and III are still kicking and they are getting rereleased while IV (presumably) shits all over the place.

Mythologies is fucking dead tho.

>Homeworld prequel are pretty good
You mean the game that's basically C&C4 but without an offended outrage surrounding it? Love its aesthetic but the rest is awful.

Ok, let me rephrase my question. What RTSs allow you to focus on turtling and still win?

...

>other people taking the game seriously made it unfun for me

you realize how silly that is, right?

that's your opinion. Also AoE3 still has a dedicated fanbase

Competfags and APM build order trash with no stratergy.

What the fuck are you on about?
Gameplay-wise it's the same as HW2 minus moving in 3D space (which was purely cosmetic and didn't actually affect anything gameplay wise as units have 360 degree firing).
Story is straight up great.

> Planetary Annihilation

I'm still mad!

Build orders are a part of strategy though

Any RTS where your opponents are retards.

>Grey Goo is good

because Dune2 was the peak of RTS

Any RTS with base building as long as you play SP/compstomp.
Protip, you can't exclusively turtle and win in any RTS in MP unless you're playing against braindead imbeciles.

Devs focusing on APM and multiplayer in an effort to become the next hot E-sport while neglecting singleplayer campaigns is what I was talking about.

This.

that space company game.

please user, explain how was AoE3 garbage

The devs started focusing too much on APM clusterfuck multiplayer, scaring away anyone that just wants to play more casually or for single player.

Go on and explain why it's bad.
4 asymetric factions, enjoyable SP campaign, CnC-style gameplay

What RTS has done that since SC2?

Oh good I'm triggered. CnC4 may b the worst game I ever played. I think I got about 20 minutes in before I quit.

Fuck EA for driving that series into the ground

I don't want to unrealistically micro, I want to realistically build up an army and employ strategies that sergeants/field commanders etc. will employ with common sense while I simply give strategic overview to commanders rather than tell every single little squad what to do and where to go. Micro-ing is simply not fun at all when you want to be immersed in a WAR game

AoE II and Starcraft are sacred cows and the fanbases will never move on.

AoM arguably was an improvement in all aspects to AoE II.

>SP became non-existant or throwaway at best
This times a hundred.

Oh and also dropping focus on base building and more on the combat. I imagine the people who liked the base building and resource collecting more moved on to like city builders or more recently Factorio.

The fact you don't know Cossacks and think Cossacks 3 is bargain bin tier makes me violently angry, fuck you.
Cossacks 3 in general straight up doesn't belong in that fucking list.

They prolly ruin it like dow3.. Turn it into a moba piece of shit. Youll see glowing joan of arc sending troops flying left and right

The question was what killed the RTS. That was my answer. Everyone tried to copy the success of Starcraft and killed the genre in the process. The last good RTS I played was DOW and that was because it didn't try to be Starcraft.

Are there any hyper-realistic games in either the rts or 4x genre that I should be aware of? They all seem to have this super fucking cringey overall aesthetic where everything is like covered in plastic and it's like "epigg!!!! 4 gamerz only!!11 xD xD lazerssss and epicness!!!!" and I'm completely unaware of one that isn't like this

The gene pool was polluted by niggers and the average IQ has dropped 5 points.

Aurora
Dominions 4

dawn of war 3 implemented moba objectives into an rts game. the result was a grease fire and they ended up releasing an actual rts mode 2 months later.

That's not what reviewers say.

Cossacks 3 tried to be Starcraft? Tooth and Tail tried to be Starcraft? Deserts of Kharak tried to be Starcraft? I don't think what you're saying is true at all.

>reviewers
Please gas yourself.
Also Cossacks 3's user reviews are from launch, it launched in super buggy state. That was a year ago user.

There are over 40 thousand people playing RTS games on Steam right now. GOG has RTS games as well.

How many people do you think played RTS games at any one time in the past? You really think it was that much higher? And if so, why does it really matter?

MOBAs killed them.
Casuals like the fact that they only have to worry about controlling one unit.

>Total War
>RTS
Look at this retard

>supcom2 is bad meme
If it wasn't following as the sequel to the greatest game in the entire genre, bar none, it would have been well liked as its a completely fine game on its own.

>Summary: Cossacks 3 is a combination of war, economy, army developing, building and upgrading. This RTS gameplay promises to return old fans in the golden ages of the genre and give newcomers a unique experience.
Also that score isn't that much different from what the other games have on Metacritic.

Don't you know that genres never die? They just wane in and out of popularity.

Dont forget the people playing SC2. According to the menu there are 7300 games of SC2 going on right now

Civ is turn based dumbass

>most recent and popular strategy game has 10,500 players
That's nothing to be proud of.

Titans was fun. I still play the single player campaign every now and then.

A shame they Jewed their customers by releasing Titans as a separate game.

but they didn't, user

it's the barrier of entry that's too high (i guess the skill floor)?

This is my experience when trying to get friends into an RTS, it's just really difficult them to grasp the "basics".

Is there a unit cap? I can't stand that shit. I like massive battles with hundreds of units, not a few dozen

There was an upgrade on steam for like $15. I think it goes down to like $5 during the sales.

game length, most people dont have the patience for RTS.

>all that shit

>living under a rock (basement)