Comment by Fnoord
5 hours ago
The spiritual successor of Starcraft is Stormgate. I cannot comment on it, I have no idea how good it is. AFAIK it is multiplayer only. I played Dune II, Warcraft II, C&C, Red Alert, Starcraft (didn't like, I never understood the hype), Dark Reign, Total Annihilation, Warcraft III as kid, but... only single player (at various difficulties). That is just how games were generally played in the 90s. I do remember using a null modem cable at some point, but IIRC was only to play Doom and Duke3d.
I believe the RTS genre at a whole got superseded by the MOBA genre (with DotA and LoL). A genre I tried once (HotS) and was terrible at. If you're shit and you're not improving (I didn't enjoy it either, I felt forced to do it for a reward in another game), stop trying. I never tried any other MOBA, except maybe a touchscreen one, Warcraft Rumble? Either way, I got burned by Hearthstone Mercs and fell once more in the trap with Rumble. After Blizzard announced removed of addons from combat, I've finally said goodbye to the Warcraft franchise and Blizzard in general.
There's one game I really do like which has a kind of RTS with map feeling to it: Total War: Warhammer series (though I laud their BS with DLCs and multiple game versions). I suppose the whole Total War series is as good, I just like the Warhammer universe. The other day, Settlers II was discussed on here, including a FOSS clone. Settlers II is also a game I liked (III not so much though artwork was nice, never played the orig.). Supposedly it isn't RTS, tho I am pretty sure back then it was called RTS.
I agree, I think MOBAs superceded the "real time" part of RTS's, while the more turn based Civ/4x, Total War series strategy type games ended up taking a lot of the base building part. Having them both together was just straight up difficult and incredibly intense, like the game itself demanded you be on adderall because your attention cannot wane for a single moment.
The better I got at competitive RTS's the less interesting the game got for me, it just kinda of felt like chess where there was only going to be one or two interesting interactions in the game if played well, otherwise its just a game of who makes a mistake too early.
Teamfight Tactics and Autochess are interesting newer entries though, allowing time to strategize and adding a lot of randomness to the games, where you can't just play one build. Even then though, as these games get more and more explored, "optimal" strategy gets eventually discovered and the game devs especially in TFT are in a race to try to keep things high variance but also seem fair - its definitely a difficult job!
> The better I got at competitive RTS's the less interesting the game got for me, it just kinda of felt like chess where there was only going to be one or two interesting interactions in the game if played well, otherwise its just a game of who makes a mistake too early.
I feel the exact same way. The ELO system saves you from getting steamrolled if you’re a casual player but improving just means the game becomes formulaic to the point of no longer being fun. Stronghold 2 was kind of interesting in that it was an unranked lobby with good variation in player ability and team-oriented maps. Most players knew the basic economic and combat metas, but you’d often end up in situations where one of your teammates dropped out on a 3 vs 3 and you’d still win.
> The spiritual successor of Starcraft is Stormgate
This was their claim, but it did not pan out in reality. It flopped on launch, hard. Peak player count since launch has been less than 100, and is currently hovering around 25.
It was really proof that gameplay often takes a back seat to visual identity, ESPECIALLY if the gameplay is extremely derivative, which this was. They had a massive amount of goodwill from fans of the genre, but when they started sharing screenshots it deflated fast - its not a 2025 game, its a 2010 clone of a popular 2005 game. Its nigh impossible to make a spiritual successor to genre defining games in WC3 and SC2 - too many things need to go perfect.
It had a better chance if it could find its own voice, but it ended up feeling like a direct to home video sequel to a popular movie