Poll of the Day > Other than niche titles; was Starcraft 2 really the last decent RTS?

(+) Yeah! (+)

By niche titles I mean stuff like Offworld Trading Company, and perhaps mobas since they have their roots in RTS

...Company of Heroes 2 didn't go so well, despite the first one being excellent

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halo wars 2

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helIy posted...

halo wars 2

I played something Halo strategy game, but it was terrible... let me check my backlog

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...Halo: Spartan Assault

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that's not a strategy game

and yes it was terrible

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The genre is pretty dead. I can't even remember one after sc2.

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Company of Heroes 2 came out three years after SC2, so no.

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Is it not a niche genre? It's not one that's friendly to the casual

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I'm not aware of any straight-up Warcraft/Starcraft clones, but there are at least a couple good "real-time strategy" games: Stellaris and Factorio. There's also Hearts of Iron 4 but I haven't played it.

Other older games like EU4 and Sins of a Solar Empire have received new DLC post-SC2.

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Total War Warhammer 2 is fucking great. Every other TW entry past Shogun 2 has been trash. But they scored with that one.

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Where the fuck is AOE4? Shit has been teased for like forever

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Sahuagin posted...

Factorio.

I get why people call Factorio an RTS, but unless you deliberately make the Biters substantially more threatening than they are by default, I feel like it really doesn't have the competitive aspect that really defines the genre. There isn't really a defined failure state in Factorio short of getting spawn camped by Biters, and that generally isn't going to happen to the vast majority of players.

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DocDelicious posted...

Company of Heroes 2

helIy posted...

halo wars 2

Age of Empires remastered

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EvilMegas posted...

Age of Empires remastered

I can't seem to get into Age of Empires... I wish I could since AoE2 remastered has TONS of achievements on it!

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I supposed there's the recently released Command&Conquer remastered, which was kinda my headspace at the time (other than SC2)

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I actually had C&C remastered in my original post but took it out because I wasn't sure if it was released yet.

AoE is probably one of the most fun RTS games I've ever played, there is a ton of variation in the game. I also love seeing my armies move in formation.

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How's Age of Empires 3?
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adjl posted...

I get why people call Factorio an RTS, but unless you deliberately make the Biters substantially more threatening than they are by default, I feel like it really doesn't have the competitive aspect that really defines the genre. There isn't really a defined failure state in Factorio short of getting spawn camped by Biters, and that generally isn't going to happen to the vast majority of players.

it sounds like you're saying that "strategy" implies warfare? even without the biters, I would consider the game to be a "real-time strategy game", but maybe I'm using the word "strategy" wrong?

factorio requires lots of strategy and especially logistics, but maybe not much tactics (though it does have some tactics too). it's maybe not a tactical strategy game, but it seems to me to definitely be a strategy game. and it's definitely real-time.

adjl posted...

There isn't really a defined failure state in Factorio short of getting spawn camped by Biters

being killed is definitely a fail state, game over screen and all (although they did add respawning at one point, so maybe that's what you mean).

even then I definitely had a "failure state" this last playthrough when I didn't out-tech the biters, didn't notice a new biter base set up under my pollution cloud, and was over-run by an army of tier 3 biters when I could barely kill 1. I had to reload an older save (admittedly not that older), tech up my projectile weapons, and build a 5-wall 2-turret thick defense structure to hold them off. (yes this is with custom rules, but not really tougher enemies). and even then, each wave carved a deep hole into my wall. (I eventually realized I had to go out and destroy the base myself, because it was spawning huge amounts of biters due to all the pollution it was absorbing.)

I mean, it isn't an exaggeration to call this "real-time strategy"; that's literally unambiguously what it is. even thinking in stupidly strict terms of "only warcraft clones are true RTS games!", the gameplay very closely resembles that anyway.

it sounds like what you really mean is that the game is easy on default settings. maybe, but that doesn't make it not an RTS game.

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warcraft clones are just dune clones by proxy :D

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Sahuagin posted...

it sounds like you're saying that "strategy" implies warfare?

Generally, yeah, or at least some form of competition between factions (you can have economic RTS's, after all). You can certainly make a case for non-competitive games being strategic and real-time, but that's really not what's typically meant by the genre label "real-time strategy" (much like "Role-playing game" doesn't literally mean any game in which you play a role).

Sahuagin posted...

factorio requires lots of strategy and especially logistics, but maybe not much tactics (though it does have some tactics too). it's maybe not a tactical strategy game, but it seems to me to definitely be a strategy game. and it's definitely real-time.

It strikes me as being more similar to management sims in that resource management and production are the game's primary focuses. Obviously, it's a very different game from Sim City et al, but the core gameplay style is more similar to that than to RTS games.

Sahuagin posted...

being killed is definitely a fail state, game over screen and all

I suppose technically it does, but in practice the norm is simply to reload the most recent save and try not to get hit by a train this time. Outside of self-imposed "hardcore mode" challenges, it doesn't really constitute "losing" the game, and the addition of a respawn feature basically amounted to dropping that pretense because very few people actually treated it like that and it ended up being more of an inconvenient setback than anything else (that, and multiplayer already offered respawning).

Sahuagin posted...

it sounds like what you really mean is that the game is easy on default settings. maybe, but that doesn't make it not an RTS game.

Eh, that's debatable. You can certainly say that it has an "RTS mode" of sorts if you deliberately tweak the enemy settings enough to make them an actual threat and make combat/defense a major part of the gameplay, but that's a very specific way to play the game that you have to deliberately seek out. Using that to call the game an RTS is not entirely unlike calling Warcraft 3 a MOBA because you can make DotA in it (though that is a substantially more extreme example than this and the fact that MOBA's are arguably a sub-genre of RTS muddies that a bit). By default, the core focus of the game is on factory building, with combat (and, by extension, competing for territory control and access to new resources) being a secondary mechanic that must be managed in order to make that central goal happen.

As with all genre arguments, though, I think it's too easy to get bogged down quibbling over semantics and lose sight of the reason genre labels exist in the first place. When asking if a game qualifies as a certain genre, the only important question that needs to be answered is "Would I recommend this game to somebody purely based on the knowledge that they enjoy the genre I'm trying to apply here?". Generally speaking, most people who say they like RTS's want something like Warcraft or AoE, so recommending Factorio isn't necessarily reasonable on that basis (recommending it on the basis of it being a fantastic game is, but that's beside the point), even if the game can be voluntarily configured to provide a comparable experience. Comparatively, recommending it to somebody who enjoys games like SimCity because of that genre preference is more reasonable, because somebody who likes management games will be looking for something like Factorio.

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adjl posted...

Generally, yeah, or at least some form of competition between factions (you can have economic RTS's, after all). You can certainly make a case for non-competitive games being strategic and real-time, but that's really not what's typically meant by the genre label "real-time strategy" (much like "Role-playing game" doesn't literally mean any game in which you play a role).

Indeed, one of my fav current RTS is Offworld Trading Company which is entirely non-combat... it's all about economic dominance

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adjl posted...

Generally, yeah, or at least some form of competition between factions (you can have economic RTS's, after all). You can certainly make a case for non-competitive games being strategic and real-time, but that's really not what's typically meant by the genre label "real-time strategy" (much like "Role-playing game" doesn't literally mean any game in which you play a role).

well I definitely don't adhere to the "now that there's warcraft, only warcraft-like games are RTSs" rule. and again, even then this game actually is warcraft-like. I research military tech to be able to place turrets at choke-points to fight monsters that attack in swarms, and everything happens in real-time. it's an RTS, no exaggeration or stretching of any kind required. I don't care if the naive definition is more shallow than that.

adjl posted...

I suppose technically it does, but in practice the norm is simply to reload the most recent save and try not to get hit by a train this time.

well, as I said, having your base overrun is a thing, too, and it's practically identical to being overwhelmed by zerg. you don't need to tweak the settings as much as you say (and it doesn't matter, because tweaking the settings is a part of the game); it's very possible to end up in an unwinnable situation if you neglect your military tech, or if you're surrounded enough and your power grid crashes with too much reliance on lasers, etc. and again, you're really just saying that "it's easy enough that it doesn't qualify" which doesn't even make sense.

being able to save and load the game doesn't matter either, that's completely normal for a PC game.

adjl posted...

When asking if a game qualifies as a certain genre, the only important question that needs to be answered is "Would I recommend this game to somebody purely based on the knowledge that they enjoy the genre I'm trying to apply here?".

no, definite disagree. that's just narrow thinking. as if all genres become more and more focused over time rather than more and more broad. just because a game does some things different than existing games in a genre doesn't mean it doesn't fit in that genre; rather it broadens it.

and again, it's a strategy game to me even without biters. strategy to me means large-scale (macro) planning, not just large-scale planning directly related to warfare. I don't care what the naive view is.

adjl posted...

(much like "Role-playing game" doesn't literally mean any game in which you play a role)

that's not the right example; that's a misuse of the term RPG that doesn't capture anything at all about the genre. it's an ignorant literal reading of the term that is useless and doesn't identify anything. RPG means a game in which you make roles to play (or maybe you might be able to limit that to being given roles to play; as long as the role can vary is the key concept).

RTS means a strategy game that runs in real-time. there's a lot of implications there, to both of these ideas (RPG and RTS). it makes a big difference when a game can be played via multiple different roles. it's not a superficial difference, it changes the game in fundamental ways.

real-time strategy games are hugely different than turn-based ones, regardless of the degree of military VS non-military strategy that entails. it's not a superficial difference, it changes what the game is in fundamental ways.

and still, this game has military strategy... it just isn't absolutely 100% focused on military strategy above all else, it's more like 50-75% instead. whoop-de-doo.

you have a variety of points here that I definitely don't agree with:

- non-military strategy games are not strategy games
- hybrid genre games are not in any of the genres they pull from
- once a game in a genre become popular enough, it eclipses the rest of the genre and the genre becomes only about that game and games that are similar to it
- if a game lets you modify the degree of a genre-defining element of its gameplay, then it no longer qualifies for that genre

all of these are unnecessarily narrow ways of thinking.

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hey wait... ...

What about Dawn of War 3?

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