Comment by ecshafer
7 months ago
Starcraft becoming uber popular in Korea I think really hurt the RTS genre. I did play RTS games online when I was younger. But I think you're right, Everything went from lets make a fun game with a cool campaign, to lets make an Esport. Company of Heroes 1 to 3, Dawn of War 1 to 2, Age of Empires 1,2,3 vs 4. You can really see this.
I think the campaigns of StarCraft II are amazing (never played Broodwar unfortunately). However I kinda agree that StarCraft's success hurt the RTS genre, because it's just so freaking good. 15 years since release and there are still tournaments played, it's fun to watch and projects like Stormgate have a really hard time, because SC2 is the bar and it's super difficult to reach. In terms of unit legibility, responsiveness, balance, etc. The bad thing is, it's not an approachable game at all, it mainly is interesting in the competitive/eSport scene.
If I watch YT videos a la "New RTS games 2025/2026" there are very interesting projects which give me hope that SC2 is not the end of RTS games.
A lot of the new RTS games I think just end up trying to be StarCraft but not. Grey Goo for example was one that came out a few years ago and it was just Starcraft with a new skin. I am not saying Starcraft is a bad game, its a fantastic game (though I do prefer Warcraft). But it kind of sucks the air out of the genre.
Starcraft and Starcraft II, and Warcraft I,II,III had great campaigns. So it is kind of ironic that a lot of the games copying them cut the campaigns for the esports focus.
I think you're stretching your point too far if you think Grey Goo was just a SC clone... Grey Goo is clearly in the the C&C branch of RTS more than the StarCraft branch, and of course made by Petroglyph. It's macro-heavy base-building, not micro-heavy, even as the Goo, it doesn't play the same as SC at all. It's also more than a few years old now (10)... On release the focus was the campaign, it didn't even release with replay or observer mode for multiplayer.
Tempest Rising is a newer RTS (this year) that's also in the C&C style, its highlight is the campaign. (Multiplayer I think is basically in the go-to-discord phase already.) The real problem is that RTS is just an unpopular genre, whether it's taking design inspiration from the C&C branch or the SC branch.
The first StarCraft was Blizzard North at its peak. I recall how difficult it was to win just sending all your troops towards the enemy, because every unit had a comparatively cheap counter.
It was particularly visible in how, if you edited the map so that every pile of resources was 50k, so essentially endless, you'd arrive at a stalemate.
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If you think Grey Goo for just Starcraft with a new skin, check out Stormgate. They went so far to replicate almost all UI elements and put them in similar spots. With even things like the top ability bar which resembles Spear of Adun/coop commander interfaces in SC2.
Age of Empires 2 has big tournaments as well, and the campaigns are fairly popular too I think.
It's a bit weird to me that AoE 2 is the most popular of that series, considering how much more streamlined and balanced Age of Mythology is.
For example, getting to the 3rd age in AoE 2 ASAP is basically mandatory, but in AoM you can potentially start attacking from the 2nd age. On top of that, getting to the 3rd age in AoE 2 takes much longer than AoM. So there's basically a whole lot of wasted time at the start of an AoE 2 match.
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You're right. I'm biased because I'm watching Starcraft for years know, but never really AoE.
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Genres also come and go. Arena shooters are also out for a long time, compared to 95-2005. Or point and click adventure games. I think there are a huge amount of players who are genre agnostic, or, not even "gamers", and just jump from one type of fun to the next.
DoW 2 is great, DoW 3 on the other hand…
I liked base buildings. DoW 2 was a good game, but the lack of base building was a let down.
Yeah I can see that, I always felt like 2 captured the feel of the factions a bit more than the first did.
We still play Company of Heroes 1 as a LAN party game, after almost two decades. It's interesting to see the graphics and gameplay hold up pretty well.
It was sad to see the slow and steady enshittification with 2 and 3. The online community is pretty toxic too.