/v/ - Video Games

Do (good) RTS games even come out anymore?

Loria looked kinda interesting but WC2's hand-drawn graphics are just too much better than it. Its nice to see people have appreciation for games like that though.

Anyways I think Starcraft is perfection in terms of an RTS for competitive environments. The gookclick meme is forced and fake, especially considering older SC pros were capable of beating gooks through pure innovation and strategy back in the day. Its just that NA is now so utterly casualized, coddled and cancer-ridden and Korea is nothing but esports that its not even a contest anymore. But even so, between gooks there is still an immense amount of strategy. I know of very few games that blend the real-time aspect so acutely with the strategy portion of the game.

Don't get me wrong, I love Age of Empires 2 but the time it takes to do anything is so much slower that it might as well be turn-based by comparison. Starcraft doesn't lack in depth whatsoever; a single building grid unit can make a world of difference (and not even necessarily for blocking choke points, just for strategy and positioning in general) and its fast-paced enough to take advantage of everything that I just find it to be the pinnacle of RTSes.

Anyways that's my opinion

>>15105707

They're disappointed it didn't take off as an esports meme and gooks are still playing/watching brood war, not even the remaster. Maybe they spent too much budget on WoL for it to recoup for the RTS audience. I got WoL on launch and I have to say it was really fucking rocky; it took years for the Custom game scene to even remotely resemble Warcraft 3 and even today its barren compared to Warcraft 3, though they did fix the interface. Heart of the Swarm had less production value than WoL and Legacy of the Void even less, though they seem better adapted to work with less resources and the campaign fits together with all the goodie bonuses you'd expect. Also, no lan. They'll never get anywhere with e-sports organizers without LAN support.

Unfortunately you're correct, the whole RTS scene seems woefully barren.

>>15105757

CEASE

>>15105707

Its been a little while since I touched an RTS. I have this thing where I go through "phases". Right now I'm in a JRPG/SRPG/ARPG phase, but when I feel like getting back to RTSes I'll probably play some oldish shit like the Warlords Battlecry games. I remember those being immensely fun when I was a kid. I'll also probably end up playing Empire Earth as well, same situation there. Having a hero unit just makes these kinds of games very engaging for me for whatever reason.

Oh, and those fucking LotR RTS games that came out on PC, and possibly a different one on console; xbox 360 were great. I can't wait to replay those at some point in the future

>wanting Nu-Blizz to make another RTS

C'mon man. Do you think AoE 4 will be a damn? The fact that its a Windows 10 exclusive (and possibly a Windows Store exclusive too or something) already should send red flags to everybody's brains.

Its been very long since I played Starcraft in terms of competitive shit; I always preferred custom games or "arcade maps" as they are now called, and the campaign.

WoL was the last good iteration of Starcraft (writing wasn't great for the campaign but it was still *very* fun; I replay it every year and beat it last year or 2016 on brutal finally), HotS and LotV really shat the bed and drove everyone away, not only with the godawful campaigns but also with Blizzard's pants-on-head retarded balancing and those cancerous new units they added to extend game length in the worst ways possible, but also ending them on what is almost coin-flip tier retardation

>Liberator

>Spider Mine

>Locusts/Swarm Hosts

and so on. I think Disruptors are ridiculous as well, 1 click and your army is gone or some shit, so you're always on-edge. If you fuck up one blink or projectile dodge, you could literally lose the game and that shit is not fun and only encourages even more conservative play until someone makes a mistake. It doesn't reward creative shit like WoL did.

Of the upcomming games that can classify as RTS there are none that are truly competitive.

Petroglyph is making some Conan themed RTS, but it's at least 2 years away.

Battlefleet Gothic Armada 2 is the only hope for the genre now, and it's super niche.

AoE4 is in the hands of Relic, who cannot be trusted after making a mockery of DoW3.

The last one is Iron Harvest which is an RTT and looks pretty slow/meh tier.

You can just give up on hyper-competitive RTS for a while. And in general that style of e-sport game belongs to blizzard.

>>15105750

They developed it from the ground up with esports bux in mind. So they only balanced the game around the top 50 global players and ignored 99.99% of the playerbase which alienated everyone that is incapable of earning a living off of Starcraft 2. It's insane how much changes every damn patch forcing even devoted fans to relearn and devise new build schemes every month to deal with the forever changing meta. Now a constantly evolving meta is great for most competitive games but only when that meta shift is devised from the fans learning new counters and strategies and not when the devs fundamentally change how an entire race is played every few fucking months. Also, it's still bugged out the ass and cheaters are a thing but Blizzard pretends they aren't.. They waited too long to get rid of David Kim

I just picked up SC2 again 3 days ago and I'm a complete fucking baddie but I like dicking around in custom games and watching tournaments.

Why make an intensive RTS when a sportsball game can release to infinitely more success and include loads of microtransactions? My favorite RTS is Total Annihilation, and for a game released when it did I still haven't seen any game rival it. The game had fucking collision physics. A plane exploding would let off debris that could damage nearby buildings and units. My favorite was when an artillery cannon shot and by pure happenstance a plane was overhead that it couldnt target on purpose and it would still manage to collide. That was fantastic. No game even approaches the scope of TA. SCBW was more optimized sure, and the controls and meta more developed, but TA still stands supreme in this category for me.

>>15105839

They made flying units slow as fuck and you have to activate some "afterburner" ability to make them move faster temporarily.

They also keep nerfing the infestor because apparently caster strats are boring.

>>15105808

I like Liberators. I haven't seen a protoss use disruptors in months. idk if they're still even in the game i never see toss players use them anymore. That was a shit awful unit though. Extremely micro intensive for the defender with no real risk from attacker.

>>15105882

Only Terran medivacs have that speed boost ability. They fly slightly faster than marines walk without it.

For a long time Toss was entirely caster units. Only 2 a-move units were worth a damn and so the top toss players kept bitching and I think eventually blizzard just started nerfing casters all across the board. Infestor use to be OP as fuck though imo but now it's another worthless unit.

>>15105966

Actually I just realized that the reason why I believe flyers are slower is because they're much faster in another blizz game Heroes of the Storm and its just cognitive dissonance. Banshees are faster in LoV than in the previous two episodes, and they're even faster with an upgrade.

>>15105966

Toss strats were almost entirely Vrays or entirely Stalkers when I was into SC2 melee, but that was early WoL. It seems for awhile sentry and high templars were the dominant metagame, else you made a deathball of mixed protoss elites. Then again, I never left plat so maybe I just don't know what high-tier gameplay is like.

I'm a SC2 master with Terran and Protoss. I think the latest expansion pack, Legacy of the Void, is a shitty game. You start with too many works, thus eliminating early game cheese that made Broodwar an art form. The Wings of Liberty campaign is good, but the rest of it is too obvious an allusion to critical theory feminist bullshit and transhumanism, with not-so-subtle vilification of Christianity (the various Protoss factions being the denominations).

>>15106030

LotV was literally just heavy-handed propaganda and massive, disrespectful retcons

>>15105966

Liberators aren't as cancer and are a decently fun unit compared to the other things added.

>>15106029

It was collosus death ball for a good period of time that I remember, mass stalker was short-lived because Terrans realized the power of MMM and tanks

Either way I felt WoL had a nice variety of strategies, though I have to wonder how much was related to the balance changes and how much was people just discovering new shit, strategies and optimizations in the game

My little brother was slick when it came to SC2 strategy, especially back in WoL. He made it to diamond with a variety of builds but he knew how to think for himself once he was past the early game, leading to some very unusual games and strategies that were fun to watch

>>15106030

>You start with too many works

They thought the early game was too boring and that they were losing viewers because there wasn't enough excitement happening in the first 2 minutes. I'm not joking. Anyone that complains about this change on the blizzard forums is downvoted.

>>15106108

I remember when tanks would completely overpower any ground-based zerg army with their OP AOE splash. Let me be clear; I almost exclusively play Zerg so that means either ling spam, muta spam, or ultralisks+lings. I wasn't big on micro so I didn't get much use out of roaches.

>>15105574

>Do (good) RTS games even come out anymore?

No, games like Age of Empires and Starcraft memed devs into thinking only RTS worth making is some esports bait and thus no fun was allowed since. And since nothing can beat AoE/SC, you can just ignore any new game. RTS genre was slain by its own achievements.

>>15105839

If Blizzard constantly shuffles meta around, dealing buffs and nerfs, they're actually shit at balancing because they can't make every unit or strategy useful in at least SOME situations.

>>15105840

And even Supreme Commander was 11 years ago.

>>15106203

When the fuck was AoE/AoE2 esports tier ? it never had that big of an online following, like starcraft did.

Don't lump AoE with starcraft.

>>15106164

>Exemplars of their genre

>picks some of the worst fucking games imaginable for almost all of them

Jesus fucking Christ

>FE Fates and fucking Pokemon Sun/Moon for JRPG

>the newest cods and halos, CS;GO for FPS

>literally every title in action-adventure and ARPG

>Gone Homo

Jesus Christ. I think fucking IGN has better lists than this, holy shit

>Competitive RTS

Gookclick and AMP autism ruined RTS. This is fact.

>>15106248

Nah, it was the casualization of the west that did it

>>15105521

The more you click the more fun you're having! That's why Cookie Clicker is the very best genre of video games.

>>15105521

Rts are like an orgasm, the pure essence of competition.

>>15106357

My greatest achievements unilke being top 20 in wc3 and grandmaster in sc2 were that i played against my friend that played hundrets of games in bnet and still fucked them even though i only played against bots. And once my best friend was playing sc2 i told him strategies but i never played the game and he said to another friend "a natural talent". And then i was watching a guy and he was wondering "what is this guy doing" and i told him even though i didnt play wc3 more than a decade.

>>15106283

Actually it wasn't killed by casualization. Ironically enough, the genre destroyed itself.

It was killed by pro scene elitism and pro-players' cancerous fanbases which brutalized and shooed away new players at every chance they got, thus preventing and new blood from getting interested. This, combined with "flagship" RTS titles with the best chance of breaching the niche surface and grabbing people's attention turning out to be massive trainwrecks (such as Starcraft 2 and C&C 4) solidifying the general lack of interest for RTS, the genre effectively died.

MOBA did not cannibalize RTS at all. They just derived from RTS as an alternative, because the original genre itself became impenetrable to new players on all fronts and newcomers couldn't be assed to be matched with (and destroyed by) seasoned veterans and get shittalked on top of it. Good evidence of this is DotA's original conception, which came out in 2003, when RTS was still going strong, as coexisted with RTS for many years. If anything, MOBA was the young child it told to escape the onslaught in the early 2010's. It didn't "kill RTS" and become popular, but rather it became popular because it's what remained when RTS dropped dead after years of walling itself off with gookclick e-sports for many years. Ironically enough, said elitism was precisely the reason why Quake and its arena competitors died and other FPS subgenres like WWII/modern day shooters stuck around.

>>15106471

>shittalked

This rings truest of everything mentioned. I have to disable messaging while I'm laddering SC2 due to the constant abuse. Even if you lose a game and respectfully type "gg", there's a 50% chance the guy will still grief you. This isn't an issue with the game, it's some deeper issue with society. People are really shitty these days, and can't be competitive and respectful simultaneously.

>>15106546

THat is actully pretty normal and how it should be you fucking nigger.

>>15106560

It wasn't like this in Broodwar days, youngster.

>>15106546

It's especially comical because MOBA and its derivatives are killing themselves off because of this as well, what with the whole "toxicity" bullshit and people getting banned for the most ridiculous reasons due to this debacle. History's repeating itself yet again.

>>15106569

It was always this way.

>>15106471

>It was killed by pro scene elitism and pro-players' cancerous fanbases which brutalized and shooed away new players at every chance they got, thus preventing and new blood from getting interested.

Current e-sports cancer like Mobas and Tactical Shooters got around this by having match making. So new players can play with other new players, and shitty players will always be able to blame their teammates who are just as shit as they are.

It's cancer all around because it's not about playing a fucking game but building a useless skill.

>>15106471

>the genre destroyed itself

>when most of the genre had fuck-all to do with pro players or "pro scene elitism" or fanbases involving pro players

>Muh elitism stop telling me to get gud

>muh gatekeeping waaaaah

>g-gookclick APM niggers

>and its coming from a huenigger too

Starcraft 2's WoL scene was fine as well, and that came out in 2010 and lasted till about 2012, going strong and keeping interest until it dropped off a cliff.

Your explanation says nothing about the period of time between 1998 through 2010.

?Good evidence of this is DotA's original conception, which came out in 2003, when RTS was still going strong, as coexisted with RTS for many years.

It was a custom game inside an RTS's map editor, there was no "coexisting" you faggot, it was something different entirely

>but rather it became popular because it's what remained when RTS dropped dead after years of walling itself off with gookclick e-sports for many years

Provide some evidence, the only esport that's called a gookclick is Starcraft, which you called and coincidentally, you're a fag who's bitter about being told to get good

You know the funny thing? old ass SMT fags from the SMT community see this kind of disgusting behavior from the casual persona fanbase that invaded

People want shallow trash that panders to them, and that's what mobas are. Simple, easy to learn, some level of depth to grow so that people could feel good, but at the end of the day their depth cannot even come close to matching an RTS.

>said elitism was precisely the reason why Quake and its arena competitors died and other FPS subgenres like WWII/modern day shooters stuck around.

The reason those died off is because the FPS audience turned into a bunch of mouthbreathing casuals

>>15106644

>Moba and its derivatives

>derivatives of a moba

just what the fuck are you on about now?

>>15106248

>Gookclick

It must suck to be slow and desperate to put to blame on something other than yourself. It's incredibly fun to play these games if you can manage around 200 APM, which most people can if they practice some. It puts a smile on my face to harass an opponent in two spots, killing whis workers, while at the same time building units. Going fast and getting the nice adreanline boost. The more casual types of RTS games really pale in comparison.

>>15106656

Gen Z confirmed.

>>15106822

It's basically a fighting game instead of a strategy game at that point. It comes down to whoever can do the predetermined strategies faster.

>>15106828

>predetermined strategies

You can exploit the mindless copycats and get to masters pretty easily by surfing the meta, doing weird shit. Being creative is the funnest way to win. My favorite SC2 player is Florencio in that regard.

>>15106828

Buildorders are common in these games, but they only extend to a few minutes into the game since after that point, each game will be unique and you have to adapt.

>>15106828

>predetermined strategies

You mean build orders , which are optimizations of shit yes, but being an uncreative retard who 4gates every game won't get you anywhere

If you don't have the ability to think for yourself you will never win against someone who knows how to beat your strategy, you just fool yourself into thinking you're good because of the ranks you obtain by beating people more brain dead than you with q finely tuned strategy perfected by people better than you

>>15106855

That's not entirely true. There is a common track given a matchup and map which most games follow, with several decision branches but basically following a general tract the entire game. The SC2 balance team aggressively trims this decision tree by removing game mechanics that go off these tracts. Their constant sterilization of the meta has resulted in a mostly deterministic game.

>>15106891

You have not the slightest clue what you're talking about, do you?

Pretty much every single of your statements was observably false.

>>15106871

not everyone immediately goes online to find the most optimal way to do things. People used to get games and learn how to play them through actually playing. Throwing people into the deep end is a pretty shitty way to teach people especially when early laddering is nothing but cheese and shitters with alternate accounts.

>>15106901

thats not an immortal.

>>15106905

1v1 faggot?

>>15106891

>throwing them off the deep end is a shitty way to learn

Its the most effective when the chaff is thinned from the wheat

How do you think this place maintains its quality, imageboards "gatekeep" with the language, tone and people being unafraid to voice their opinions and argue

Calling someone a faggot is actually possible here and the best discussions can be found as a result

If you stay with a community and assimilate you can become a part of it naturally

>>15106916

He was vague as fuck with no examples provided whatsoever, its meaningless buzzword salad without any substance

>>15106933

he didnt have any examples but it was pretty clear what he was saying.

Blizzard doesnt like emergent gameplay and basically wants everything to be rock paper scissors where any outcome can be seen probably several minutes before any actions take place.

Makes sense because it makes it easier for fuckfaces to cast it.

>>15106933

I remember in particular a momentary WoL fad for going mass Muta in ZvP and the Blizzard response was to design an entirely new Protoss unit so it didn't happen any more. Not, you know, wait to see how it affects the game and if it's a problem then address the root of it, instead just slap away any weird shit people come up with. But before this could get implemented, players found solutions (first time I remember early Phoenix being a serious thing) and the problem solved itself. The meta policing was completely irrelevant. So how many changes like that have gone through and been forced when they didn't need to be?

For SC2, any new players should just focus on learning the mechanics and getting familiar with all the hotkeys, including those for the camera. Don't care about losing and flailing around in the game at first, it'll go much smoother after a while. It's awkward for everyone at first. Then you can work on multi-tasking: Controlling something on the map while managing your base at the same time. Using the hotkeys to quickly move the camera. There are some useful guidelands to keep in mind on how you should spend your money. Like, Protoss and Terran can only support a few unit production buildings per base, so don't add stuff that you don't have the income to support, and try to find out what your opponent is doing, so you have stuff to deal with it. Having precise build-orders won't help you much until you're a top player. If you have good control, you can make any guy that just mindlessly follows a build order look like a fool.

>>15107006

guideline*

>>15106964

>>15106942

Provide some fucking examples or abstractions mean nothing

You can make a claim but without something to back it up it means nothing, you'd think this would be easy to grasp but apparently not

>Blizzard doesnt like emergent gameplay and basically wants everything to be rock paper scissors where any outcome can be seen probably several minutes before any actions take place.

Blizzard balancing changes are retarded, yes; doesn't mean players didn't constantly find ways to innovate to piss off the balance team and make them ruin the game again with their changes. Blizzard trying to make the game Rock Paper Scissors with their balancing changes doesn't mean it was rock paper scissors; they were forced to try and keep up with player innovation.

>>15106982

Basically this.

>>15106964

>any outcome can be seen probably several minutes before any actions take place

This is evident if you watch games being casted.

>>15106933

>examples

You must not follow the SC2 scene if you really need examples. They are constantly re-balancing the game to fit their vision of the meta, rather than letting players invent it as was the case with Broodwars. The latest example was what happened with the Raven Anti-Armor Missile. You can see ladder players discovered how to use the stacking damage to great effect rather than its armor shred. Here's a game I played on US server in February, which shocked the Grandmaster caster:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A89A_sqk0sA

Shortly thereafter, you can see a Korean pro, Maru, use the same technique on a smaller scale to beat a Zerg player at Katowice 2018:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5N9fYURY-Jk

Within 1 week, Blizzard's balance team announced that they were removing this mechanic from the game:

https://us.battle.net/forums/en/sc2/topic/20761897646

After a large outcry from the player base, they stepped back their proposal:

https://us.battle.net/forums/en/sc2/topic/20761948090

They eventually went forward with a reduced nerf and compensated by buffing the Marauder, an early game unit. This is one of many, many examples of Blizzard strangling any evolution of the meta which diverges from their vision.

>>15106822

My friend got RSI from playing Age of Empires with a high APM.

I showed him Zero-K which has a lot of neat click and drag commands that reduce a lot of manual inputs. He really liked the intuitive controls and took notice to the formation drawing.

>>15107053

The issue wasn't about Blizzard's balancing team attempting to kill innovation, that's obviously true no matter what.

What it more sounded like what you said is that games fall into a template set of decisions as a result of these changes when that's clearly not true. General trends or general sets of games shouldn't be used to determine a game's potential, because the majority of people who are playing the game currently are braindead robots who autistically follow build orders; the good ones are ones who have both high level mechanics, and are able to innovate, realize situations and counter their opponents based off limited information, and then turn their decisions into a victory. People choose to be retarded and gay in most games because they're afraid to step outside of the meta because that's outside their comfort zone. They're much more comfortable learning a 4gate or whatever is the current general/generic all-around good build for a race to achieve a general level of success.

You yourself seem to have proven that there is still plenty of innovation possible with the Raven tactic.

The game has stagnated in terms of fun and in terms of depth thanks to all these cancerous changes but at its core its still an RTS and it still has oceans of depth no matter how casualized, streamlined and "templated" its become

granted I don't play SC2 much anymore anyways because of how fucking boring it is now, and because of Blizzard's balancing autism but that's besides the point

>>15107106

>Blizzard killing innovative mechanics doesn't result in template games.

<dropping a ball doesn't result in it hitting the floor: its gravity :^)

>You yourself seem to have proven that there is still plenty of innovation possible with the Raven tactic.

I literally don't know what to say to this. I just proved the opposite; it was stomped out by Blizzard.

>>15107053

Blizzard also killed this way of playing the game because one player was too good with them.

>tfw you will never see Byun destroying another Zerg pro with Reapers again

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3IQu7px0-8

>>15106749

>Starcraft 2's WoL scene was fine as well, and that came out in 2010 and lasted till about 2012

In comparison to Broodwar which is still highly preferred over SC2, with many scene players coming back to it everyday.

>Your explanation says nothing about the period of time between 1998 through 2010.

Turbulent period where RTS was divided between adding something new to the formula so it wouldn't stagnate and making something that could get popular like Broodwar (which should I remind you was the game that made e-sports explode in popularity) so they'd get sizeable revenue. Starcraft overshadowed a fuckton of titles during this time, with few franchises like C&C and SupCom managing to hold their presence. Blizzard rode on the philosophy that made their game famous, which is betting on this trend they've created and giving it most of their attention. Hell, they even abandoned Warcraft's model altogether to make it into an MMO because of it, since they didn't need it anymore as an RTS because SC covered all their needs.

This very same philosophy drove EA to push C&C to be more multiplayer focused by marketing it with the BattleCast shit so they could steal the esports scene from Blizzard. They tried so hard to do this that they ended up killing the whole franchise with that abomination that was C&C 4. I mean look at how the multiplayer worked for that game: New players had to literally GRIND singleplayer missions to UNLOCK all the units in the game for the multiplayer mode, while people who've already been playing for a long time already had all the units in the game and would stomp new players endlessly. You'd have to be willingly blind not to realize that Esports took over the genre entirely, and with it came all the rabid aspects of a sport, which I have already detailed in my previous post.

How many RTS franchises have succeeded in such a scale since Starcraft? None. How many tried? A good fucking chunk of them.

>It was a custom game inside an RTS's map editor, there was no "coexisting"

If there wasn't , RTS and MOBA would've been competing since DotA you goddamn idiot. This didn't happen. Do you know what coexisting means?

>Provide some evidence

Aeon of Strife was arguably the first MOBA in 1998 (based off Starcraft even), and Demigod was the first one to get any sort of substantial attention. DotA came out later on to be even more popular. DotA's popularity was then succeeded by LoL, which would go on to be THE most popular MOBA ever, and it came out in late 2009 when MOBA started to get any sort of mass/commercial attention, shortly before RTS went downhill the following year.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/525976/market-share-moba-games-worldwide/

And it didn't even get popular before then. MOBA games wouldn't become widely popular until 2011.

https://www.esportsbets.com/3460/history-of-league-of-legends/

If even League of Shitters, being the flagship franchise of the subgenre, didn't take the spotlight until after 2010, then MOBA was of negligible effect to RTS until around that time. It was even more niche than RTS itself. You can't "casualize" a niche this small. If that didn't kill RTS, the only logical conclusion is that it killed itself. How? Certainly wasn't the lack of games being released, we've had quite many.

>Simple, easy to learn, some level of depth to grow so that people could feel good, but at the end of the day their depth cannot even come close to matching an RTS.

Basically, but that's because there's barely any RTS to speak of anymore, with SC still dominating the genre to this day.

>The reason those died off is because the FPS audience turned into a bunch of mouthbreathing casuals

If Quake was so massively popular, it wouldn't have fallen in favor to the point of only having a couple hundred people who still put it on a godlike pedestal, while everyone else who's played it moved on. Guess what those people are.

>just what the fuck are you on about now?

Games taking elements from MOBAshit, like hero shooters (i.e. Kosherwatch, etc.)

Bottom line is that elitism DID ruin RTS, as it's a big part of the whole esports cancer ruining any sort of human decency. Even you are doing it right now with your "git guds". Believe what you want, won't change the truth.

>>15107187

Another great example, which also demonstrates how Blizzard is unable to balance simultaneously at the pro and amateur levels.

>>15107251

That is entirely impossible, you either want a balanced game or you dont.

>>15107215

Oh they are fun, it's just that it was trapped and buried by competitiveness. I mean, look at how EA revealed their latest iteration of C&C's rotting carcass. A fucking mobile game, and their presentation was choreographed like an esports match.

I miss the days lending my Tiberian Dawn discs to the lads and playing 1v1 matches for fun, without a hint of "woah dude wtf you can't micromanage like a fucking machine because you never bothered to type properly [insert pro dude/team here] wouldn't do this follow the meta or gtfo" or something the like. RTS wasn't about that.

>>15107352

You can never balance a game that caters to plebs and pros at the same time since it has an innate volatility. And the plebs usually fail so much that the top balance doesnt matter.

>>15107155

You're saying there is no more innovation possible in Starcraft 2 period?

Your example came from this year

Template games would happen no matter what in the "general majority" of games, that just seems common to me as the game evolves and people learn what the best general or common strategies are; there would just be a larger variety of "templates" if Blizzard hadn't fucked it over. Those will also change in time and people will innovate. Starcraft 2 has become ridiculously optimized in terms of build orders and that would've happened no matter what.

>>15107188

Brood War has much more depth for RTS veterans and is a better game overall compared to SC2. That's like comparing AoE 3 to 2 and wondering why people come back to the latter.

>so they'd get sizeable revenue

Blizzard wasn't making as much money off the esports scene directly until later. Every time they'd get personally involved with anything esports (which really didn't happen until 2005 and onwards) they'd mismanage it into the ground. They made their money off copies sold or muscling their way in and killing things off unintentionally with their horrible decision making.

>This very same philosophy drove EA to push C&C to be more multiplayer focused by marketing it with the BattleCast shit so they could steal the esports scene from Blizzard.

C&C was another large franchise already though.

That was 2007 to 2010, pretty late in the cycle by that point when RTSes were starting to be seen less and less and decline in quality. You're right there though.

>If there wasn't , RTS and MOBA would've been competing since DotA you goddamn idiot

Coexisting wasn't the right word. It was more like leeching. It literally existed as a custom game in a proprietary paid game.

The reason league got so popular was because it had a very unusual free-to-play model that (at the time) was lauded for being outstandingly fair to players and a highly social, fairly low-barrier game with some depth to it.

>You can't "casualize" a niche this small.

Nigger, I'm saying mobas are inherently casualized in comparison to RTSes, that's very much obvious.

>New players had to literally GRIND singleplayer missions to UNLOCK all the units in the game for the multiplayer mode, while people who've already been playing for a long time already had all the units in the game and would stomp new players endlessly.

Pretty sure that's just classic EA jewery.

>If that didn't kill RTS, the only logical conclusion is that it killed itself.

I'm failing to see where the whole "get gud" gatekeeping elitist community of Starcraft somehow killed the RTS genre from this.

>Basically, but that's because there's barely any RTS to speak of anymore, with SC still dominating the genre to this day.

But that's esports shit. We're talking about RTS as a genre.

Also, If Starcraft is still fucking alive despite all its "gatekeeping" why the fuck shouldn't it continue doing that? I fail to see how a "gatekeeping community" is at all the reason why people don't play RTSes.

I think the reasons why we don't see it is simple. The core gaming audience prefers casual, different games with less depth than their predecessors now and there's just a lot less attention now on genres that hardcore gamers would prefer.

Why do you think CoD, LoL, Fortnite, CS;GO, and all these others make the big bucks while entire genres like 2D beat-em-ups, hardcore sidescrollers, roguelikes (not roguelites), 2D hack n' slashes, shmups and all are scarce, niche, small, indie, or old? Why do you think only the big RTSes are being played (Starcraft, AoE 2, etc.) in terms of multiplayer?

Why do you think Blizzard themselves streamlined SC2's mechanics as an RTS to be super simplistic?

Why do you think Paradox is one of the only well-known companies that still makes GSGs?

I think its casualization, and the remaining people who do like the genres in question sticking with the biggest, most well-known ones because that's all that's left.

>Certainly wasn't the lack of games being released, we've had quite many.

I thought the whole point of this was talking about how the RTS genre is dead/dying and its quality has fallen? Are you only referring to esports or multiplayer RTS shit?

>If Quake was so massively popular, it wouldn't have fallen in favor to the point of only having a couple hundred people who still put it on a godlike pedestal, while everyone else who's played it moved on. Guess what those people are.

People with good taste?

>Kosherwatch

Overcuck is more known for being a shallow TF2 clone with moba elements. I don't know if it should count as a "moba" derivative simply for having abilities but for your sake let's count it

>Even you are doing it right now with your "git guds". Believe what you want, won't change the truth.

Do you even know what site you're on faggot?

>>15107424

Broodwar was never more in depth than sc2, it was more balanced because it featured more simple game mechanics. The reason why the pros now all play sc1 is to ride the zeitgeist. Sc2 alwayss had fundamental problems like terra having an edge in early game harrassment, or buildorder protoss. The fundamental problem was making "missclicks" without any recovery mechanics.

>>15107448

Noone is going to play game where forgetting to put the queen on a ramp and surviving the early game because they are not carefull watching mines and what not. It was also having a big random factor, i beat the best players on this planet with a baneling bust or an 8pool.

>>15107424

>You're saying there is no more innovation possible in Starcraft 2 period?

>Your example came from this year

The Raven AAM was only added to the game in late 2017, the result of a previous balance patch. You're also missing the point: Blizzard's nerf prevented the counter-tactic from ever materializing. This is the innovation that was prevented, not the initial "imbalanced" usage of the missile.

>>15107410

>You can never balance a game

FTFY

If Blizzard invented chess, they would have reduced bishop movement to 2 squares after watching Bobby Fischer play.

>>15107469

People do not play a game where they cant shift blame and which is unforgiveable.

>>15107478

It doesnt matter how the plebs play because there is so much room for improvement that the little things do not matter. Take it from a grandmaster.

>>15107482

>grandmaster

There are two types: masters of the meta, and masters of cheese. I respect the latter more than the former. Anyways, I agree with what you're saying, but its a moot point because balance is not something you achieve by changing mechanics. It changes as the collective mind of the player base, "the meta", evolves. If you were around for Broodwars, you'd remember the years of everybody thinking Terran was OP, followed by Protoss, followed by Zerg. Mechanics never change; only tactics.

>>15107460

>It was also having a big random factor, i beat the best players on this planet with a baneling bust or an 8pool.

The inflated worker count of LotV is what turned SC2 into a coinflip game. The entire early game of scouting and worker harass has been eliminated in favor of "turbo mode" and coinflip cheese strategies.

>>15107506

The meta in sc2 is stale stephano was creative, it was effective and quickly copied by koreans until it became botlike and the koreans prevailed. The meta gets hijacked by the mechanically superior players.

>>15107539

Never played LOTV. But i watched some streams.

>>15107506

>>15107539

InnoVation, the best SC2 Terran macro player in the world has now resorted to cheese to win tournaments.

It's fucking hilarious how many people are butthurt by this. He played the long game.

Competitive RTS games are a joke of a dying genre and they will all be dead soon thankfully. They want you to control units precisely but the game itself controls like shit.

Who the fuck cares? The strategy is in the game. If you aren't cheating, then it's all valid. It's not about entertainment, it's about winning. If a 2 minute cannon rush makes you win, then people need to learn to play better.

>>15107629

Also >wearing a literal pedo logo on his shirt

To me it always felt like StarCraft and the like are like a top-down isometric shooter where you get to control a whole bunch of guys, not just one character, with some strategy elements. Micromanagement decides the game, and if it doesn't then the game is decided by who is to be the first to make a small fuckup and then it's just dragging out the inevitable because it just snowballs from there.

Also since when there are flags on /v/? I had to double-check if it's not /k/.

>>15106598

I remenber playing this, mate. Pretty fun game. A different kind of RTS with some more diplomacy and the way your villages worked was quite unique.

Play the second one, it's essentially a direct upgrade to the first one and you can even play with the Fryghtans.

(Avoid the 3rd one, it has nothing to do with the rest)

>>15107702

Strategy games are ultimately the uncrowned king of video games, too bad that they do not get that recogntion, Usually motoric skillls will preveail.

>>15107741

This is why turn based strategies will always be superior - it doesn't matter if you have 10 000 000 APM or 10, what matters is planning and calculating.

>>15107760

You are polarizing rustad.

>>15106471

> said elitism was precisely the reason why Quake and its arena competitors died and other FPS subgenres like WWII/modern day shooters stuck around.

>be Quake

>be PC shooter from 90s

>around the time CRT monitors were primarily used

>CRT monitors go to 120+ Hz

>enthusiast frame rates are 120+ fps

>later in early 2000s

>new LCD monitors are out and generally support half of that

>YouTube's early years of having 30 fps only videos

>console gaming catching on and this was before Microsoft's study on M+KB vs controller players

>Quake tourney players have their videos recorded of them

>post video with a frame rate 1/4th of the frame rate the game was played at

>people see Quake players making weird inhuman godlike shots with a level of control impossible or extremely rare with controllers

>people think Quake players are some odd god tier of fps gamers that acquired such finesse with a decade of constant training

>fastforward to 2010

>average veteran Quake player that scared the fuck out of people would be in their 30s to 50s by now

>monitors above 120 Hz are real cheap and widely available

>???

>>15107824

>be quake

>be PC shooter from the 90s

>have retarded bugs where damage and character speed are tied to the framerate

>not tell about it to anyone, instead make nebulous "pros can feel the difference" statements

>fast forward 30 years

>only nostalgia neckbeards play it anymore

>>15107869

VQ3 does that and some annoying things like vector snapping and round downs at certain angles. There's engines branched from the source release nowadays that supports independent frame rate from physics.

>>15108072

I was always motorically inferior to other players, but i played the most fucked up strats.

>>15108362

>idra

>a good player

lmao no

Even in BW he was placed on the B-Team for CJ Entus and told to shut the fuck up, his only accomplishment was making tossgirl cry that one time.

I mean he was good for foreigner skill levels, admittedly, but that was in the mid 00s, where foreigner skill level had already tanked compared to the results of koreans devoting their entire lives to starcraft.

>>15105521

I don't mind competitive RTS in general.

I'm more of a casual RTS player who primarily wants those grand campaigns and 'conquer the world' setup over playing with other people.

I wish devs would add more focus on that instead of hoping to be the next StarCraft eSports game.

>>15108316

>Every single one is shit because every single one is about memorization patterns and training to input them faster.

Maybe you'll like Zero-K? A lot of APM intensive commands are simplified to click and dragging.

For example you can draw a unit formation by while holding down the mouse button (balling them together will incur friendly fire since they can't shoot through each other).

There are some other neat extras like terraforming and terrain deformation syncing with high ground bonus and water.

>>15108542

>tfw I'm too good to play with my friends but too insecure to play against strangers

You have no idea how much headache you are saving yourself.

>play online

>everyone wants to play teams

>play teams

>do 2v2 or up to 4v4 normally

>build military and expand to a reasonable share of the map to the middle

>the other team is going on the offense cooperatively

>2v1 essentially in terms of unit variety and quantity

>teammate isn't supporting and instead is building his base

>lose ground and essentially defending base

>wonder where the fuck my teammate is

>he built two of the most expensive turrets in his game for the whole match without expanding economy

>in a game where turrets are twice the expense of a military unit of the same power and is actually mobile

>he is entirely relying on a long range cannon that fires once every 10 seconds to clear the entire map and defend our territory

>that doesn't even deal all that much damage nor is guaranteed to accurately hit something

>he built it at base

>he didn't put expensive laser turret at crucial points of interests or in the way of common enemy routes

>doing this doesn't even work on campaign or skirmish AI

I don't normally rage during multiplayer games, but I actually did for these cases.

SC2 sucked from the outset because it got rid of Vultures.

>>15108722

It sucked because the original team is no more, and Metzen can't write for shit.

James Phinney was responsible for the gameplay design and story for SC1, so he's pretty much responsible for the success of Starcraft in the first place.

>>15108542

You can turn the chat off, dude. Great for shy autismos.

>>15108316

Not true, my family. While there are treaded paths in terms of strategy which help you with your overall gameplan, at the tactical level, you're faced with tons of decisions every game. I'm talking about stuff like how to position your units, whether you should dive in to take out the enemy's expensive unit, when it's safe to expand, when and how to harass and so forth.

>>15108716

SupCom, right?

>>15108722

SC2 sucked for so many more reasons. The most offensive being the buffs Terran got, since they were already probably the strongest team in Brood War, Flash not withstanding.

>>15108716

I've found that playing with teammates in almost any game is the worst unless you know them IRL or it's a game with big teams. It's rare to find someone online who actively coordinates with his teammates.

>>15109624

>You can turn the chat off, dude

Which game are you referring to? One of the few games I played online was Company of Heroes 1 and I don't recall that having an option for that. Then again I never checked. Is this a standard feature and I'm just retarded?

>>15109773

Yeah, as far as I know. The Starcraft games have the option under the 'social' tab.

>>15107006

>tfw noone responded to this, so I don't know if it helped anyone

>>15109818

Who the fuck is going to play Blizzard's game and sign in to an Always Online service that was literally more cancerous than Steam before Steam was remotely recognized as cancerous?

>>15109818

Problem is, the tutorial does such a bad job teaching the player how to properly play, especially if you only have one game so you don't get to play the other two factions properly, that new players flounder once they hit skirmishes, short of looking it up properly.

Back in the day there was none of that. You had to learn the hard way.

>>15110112

Hey man I'll play with your wife too if you want.

>>15110127

She mains Eddy in Tekken and Ivy in SoulCal, Taokaka in Blazblue and generally goes for the cheapest of any character available

Go ahead and play some vidya, but I'm betting she'll refuse to even talk to another anon.

>>15110147

Post pics and her phone# If she gives me an erection I'll share it with her.

>>15110163

Sure thing anon, the number is 18007997233, don't forget to say where you're from

>>15110112

You need to teach her to be competitive and how to play better. I taught my sister how to play Smash Bros. she mains Rosalina and now she kicks my ass all the fucking time more pointless spoiler bullshit stop doing this you retarded niggers I tried moving her on to real fighting games. So far she's enjoyed Mortal Kombat and Skullgirls and is breddy gud with Valentine and Parasoul(sp?).

>>15110088

This comic is great.

>>15108072

I'm shit too anon. Let's play SC together.

>>15108072

>tfw I edited that Feel into Beta feel

>around the time grey goo came out

>also bought 5 copies outside of my own so I could get a small group going

>gave them away to you guys

>we started playing

>horrible after horrible dev decision combined with poor servers and balance drove everyone away from grey goo

>went back to suppcom and SC2 mods

>>15108362

This was the best shit ever.

>>15110393

>hey guys, there's some ominous ebil race coming, space omnipotent cthulhu or something

>buy dlc and it's yours btw

Was there any decent RTS made after 2010?

>>15108362

But terra was a fucked up race at that time, i remember baneling busting kaz, he had 1 scv left and still managed to win.

>>15110502

Command and Conquer 4.

>>15110205

I never played SC, I'm a Command and Conquer guy

>>15105839

>>15106030

>>15106471

>>15107188

>Blizzard made a great rts game in Starcraft but was unable to capitalise on it financially. Remember in SC1, you can install it from CD to multiplay from one copy over LAN

>NuBlizz makes SC2 to replace sc1 and control the tournaments

No one likes that.

>>15105707

Dawn of War was good.

Then Dawn of War 2 kind of ruined its multiplayer, it still had an enjoyable single player campaign though. Dawn of War 3 was just very bad.

EA killed command and conquer.

Warcraft 3 became world of warcraft.

>>15105750

You had much less options at first to make custom stuff in Starcraft 2. The issue I had with Starcraft 2 was that the multiplayer was repetitive and not really fun micro wise. You had countless timed rushes which were kind of cheese like that could win you 60-70% of your games with any race until the top 200. Also back when I played it a lot, until 6 months after it released you didn't have 'master league' division or anything so when you were diamond you were just done. No way of seeing how high you ranked either. It was really bad and uncompetitive.

The single player was good and fun. Story wasn't that good but still decent enough and enjoyable for me. Kind of a shame you didn't play zerg at all in the single player in WoL but majority terran and a few missions protos.

>>15105839

Yeah its really bad. If for 98% of the players the multiplayer is either doing a certain timed rush over and over against a matchup the game isn't very much fun. In Warcraft 3 I felt like even at the lower levels of play you had a ton of options in terms of strategy, heroes choice and units you were building. Only later on at the top it felt more limited due to poor balancing (and blizz stopped balancing it).

>>15123800

I'd be more impressed but Reapers are literally the worst addition to SC2.

>>15123800

>>15123869

>vid related is after they nerfed reapers

I only hate reapers for how they used it as an excuse to remove medics. Same with the hellion removing firebats. They buffed reapers damage against everything but structures making them overlap with hellions, so hellions became hellbats fuck you asking to bring back firebats why don't you like the new units we introduced? I feel like they've had trouble with the meta for almost every new unit in sc2, especially for terrans. Toss too, and zerg the least except for the lurker replacements.

>>15124353

You should hate Reapers for turning the slowest starting and arguably weakest early team into the most aggressive team for harassing pre 5 minutes to the point no other team can safely effectively expand until they have a ranged unit.

There is almost no counter play to reapers but 'micro better', as you can't harass them down, you can't wall them off and you can't chase them with faster units. Its especially bad now they can grenade too.

They are the first in a long line of fuck ups, and easily the longest running fuck up, that completely upturn the balance of the game. Removing them would do wonders for improving SC2.

Just play Warcraft 3 instead of Starcraft you fags.

>>15133900

How can someone have this bad an opinion?

I think one big problem with SC2 was blizzard had esports in mind from the beginning in order to ride on BWs coattails and their constant attempts to "balance" the game in order to please the whining vocal minority about whatever FOTM strategy is broken. I think this is partially why the meta was so based around coinflip bullshit, with hard counters being so strong. Although in BW, up until around 2007-2008 certain match ups were considered pretty favored for one race (namely TvZ, ZvP) until a few progamers revolutionized them with new strategies that didn't involve blizzard changing shit constantly. There's a lot more to do with SC2's dwindling popularity than just balance, but being a longtime BW player who quit SC2 right as HotS dropped balance comes to mind right away. Thx for reading my mega-autism paragraph

>>15135491

This.

Biggest problem with BW balance is Scouts being a useless unit. SC2 has so many problems its hard to count them all.