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This article is something I wrote for my game design blog. You can take a look there if you want.
I know it's been a while since I've written anything. This year has been a big deal for me: starting a new game design job (still part time, but I'm hopeful that this is a big step in the right direction for me), trying to produce some new YouTube videos, the birth of my 4th child, etc. I feel like But, I've slacked off again with my articles, and want to try to gain some momentum going into the last half of the year. To that end, I'm trying to start up again, with a couple of more quick and off the cuff pieces that deal with some aspects of RTS design that I've been pondering lately.
First up, the early game ™
The 'early game' is a critical part of any RTS. Starting as soon as you load into the match, it extends... Well, I talk about that a bit below. Anyway, it's the first and often most-constrained part of an RTS match and as such it's desperately important to get correct.
It's not just a first impression to your game, it's a first impression that gets made again every time someone loads into many single player missions, any skirmish match, or any ranked/ladder/tournament game. It's experienced again, and again, and again, and if it provides a sub-par experience it's going to be really, glaringly obvious.
So, it's something that's going to need to be done correctly in order to give players a good experience. It's like... finding sand in your food. Once, it's going to maybe be a little annoying, ruin your meal. But if you find sand in your meal every time you eat, it won't be long before you choose a different restaurant.
But, uh, anyway... What does 'correctly' even look like or mean in this context? Surely, there's a ton of different ways to make an RTS and therefore a ton of archetypes for a good intro experience to a match? As a cop-out, yes, that's true. But I think there are some general rules that can be gleaned from a variety of games and situations that can serve to improve almost any 'flavor' of strategy game.
To me, the early game needs to guide the player to do 3 things: figure out what their enemy is doing (scouting or intel), commit to a general strategy (build order), and set themselves up for success going forward (player guidance). Also, ideally, the early game needs to be fairly 'stable' or 'robust' to make it somewhat difficult to knock out a player or team during this time.
Let's take a look, shall we?
First off, Let's Define Our Term
"A beginning is a very delicate time"
- Frank Herbert, Dune
I always like to start with a definition, even in a more off the cuff piece like this one is supposed to be. It's a good jumping off point; it's a good way to figure out the parameters I'm working within and to help me keep in mind what might and might not apply.
The early game is the beginning of an RTS match, of course: it encompasses the first moments/minutes of gameplay. The end of the 'early game' phase and the beginning of the 'mid game' is a more nebulous thing, however. Does the early game end when the player starts to loosen their economic constraints? That's what my gut is telling me: once the player begins to feel some lessening of economic pressure in the game, and is able to attack and defend, or to expand their income and expand their army. This of course will vary across different games with varying styles of gameplay: in Company of Heroes 2, for instance, the player's economy doesn't really 'take off' the way it might in something like Age of Empires, and so there's not really a 'lessening of economic pressure' in the sense I'm using above.
Command and Conquer games also all have kind of truncated early games, and several points which might signal the end of that phase. This is, in part, due to the fact that C&C starts players off with a significant cash reserve. Also, in C&C there's no limiting factor on the number of troops you can produce at any given time, since 'supply' or 'houses' are not existent as they are in games like StarCraft or Age of Empires. So there's no real limit to the rate at which the army is able to expand. This, in turn, leads to a lot of situations with hugely disparate army sizes. Later C&C games help address this with their 'rock/paper/scissors' damage system, but in C&C95/remaster it's often deadly
![[image loading]](https://bccasteel.files.wordpress.com/2021/06/20200928221140_2.jpg)
Perhaps the 4th Refinery (in standard play) or the construction of an Airstrip or War Factory might approximately end the 'early game' in C&C Remaster/Tiberian Dawn. Or, when (if) the player has enough spare buildings that losing one of them isn't completely crippling (e.g. second War Factory and 5/6 refineries). But with a comparatively old RTS the context might be a little weird, since a lot of the 'late game' stuff isn't really competitively viable or used. the MLRS or Nod SSM are almost never seen in PVP matches, for instance, and even the Obelisk of Light isn't used in more than one game in 20, if that often.
But, I suppose I'm digressing a little bit: the specific mechanics of when the 'early game' becomes the 'mid game' in any given RTS isn't really the point i'm trying to make. And believe it or not, I actually kind of do have a point this time. I'm trying to advocate for a better early game experience, and describe what that might look like. But I'm trying to work my way around to the point in a logical manner and let's be honest it can be kind of easy for me to take some rabbit trails along the way...
Going to try to focus up and get to the point.
Next Up: What's the Point?
![[image loading]](https://cdn.videogamesblogger.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/command-and-conquer-remastered-collection-gdi-tech-tree.jpg)
Now that we have a rough working definition of what the early game is, and we kind of know our trajectory the next step for me is to define the purpose or function of this phase of the game. To remind of you what I said above, the early game needs to guide the player to do 3 things: figure out what their enemy is doing, commit to a general strategy, and set themselves up for success going forward. Also, ideally, the early game needs to be fairly 'stable' - you should be able to lose in the first couple minutes of a match, but it's too often that this is kind of too easy to do. Losing in the early game can kind of feel crappy, especially if it's really possible to be stopped or rushed before you are even really able to tell what your opponent is doing (to say nothing of stopping what they're doing).
When I talk about 'guiding the player' I mean that the structure of play needs to set up expectations for the player and not confuse them. Let me try an example for clarification: in C&C Tiberian Dawn, the 'tech tree' does little to guide the player's experience. There's no considered flow between the buildings, not really (in my humble opinion).
Another example might be Act of Aggression, where for the Chimera faction at least, the tech tree didn't really 'guide' the player. I, personally, found it kind of difficult to grok what exactly was the game expected me to do next, which to me at least is a really un-optimal (and frustrating) experience. Warparty was a similar experience for me, where buildings in the build menu were hidden until they were available, making it impossible in-game to know what to do next, what to upgrade, that sort of thing.
![[image loading]](https://bccasteel.files.wordpress.com/2021/06/2015-07-25_00005.jpg)
This, in terms of advancing up the tech tree at least, feels really bad to a new player and can sour the experience. Even for a more experienced player I'd assume it could be of help: it's the difference between knowing your house so well you can navigate it even in the pitch dark, and being able to navigate your house in the dark but having light to see by. Either way, having the 'light' of seeing all of your options makes for a smoother experience.
Information Gathering
Two of the biggest problems with the 'early game' are: getting information, and allocating resources in the right place at the right time . Or, to use some more common vernacular from players of the genre, it's scouting and your build order. Or, to abstract it even more, it's to answer the questions: what is my strategy, and what is my opponent's strategy?
A lot of players will go into a match in an RTS knowing what they're going to plan to do. Some players just have a 'favorite' way to play: they know how to get a decent sized army out quickly and they'll just smash their force against the enemy while he's still building up. Or, they've managed to work out the execution of a 'cheese' strategy (I intend to spend a bit of time talking about cheese strategies, don't worry). Or, they like to build up a big base and a big force and will try to hole up as much as possible and 'turtle' their way into the end game. Et cetera.
Many competitive players will have 'breakpoints' in their strategy. They know they can generally learn what their opponent is going to be trying to do by such and such a point into a game, and based on that knowledge they can expand and 'macro' to a larger, higher tech army, or push in and disrupt their opponent's plans. In other words, these players have a general strategy (probably based on the particular map they're playing on) for their early game until they can gather information about their opponent's plans, then will adapt into one or another direction in order to handle what their foe is up to.
This is, of course, the ideal scenario. And it's why in high level RTS multiplayer games almost across the board, the gathering and prevention of intel is such a big thing. I mean, really, a fundamental thing, foundational. More synonyms, probably.
Dedicated scouts help the player understand and remember that they need to be keeping tabs on their opponent
One of the worst feelings in RTS to me at least, is feeling like I lost without getting the opportunity to even find out what my opponent was doing (and react to it) before it hit me. It's a delicate balance, of course: rushing and cheese, as much as some players are loathe to admit, are actually a needed part of the RTS landscape.
It is of course the timing of the various early attack options, and the balance of the difficulty of pulling them off versus the difficulty of scouting and defending them, that makes all the difference. If a Protoss player in StarCraft 2 can sneak a Probe into a Terran player's base and pull off a successful cannon rush that ends the game or puts the Terran player desperately behind 75% of the time, there's going to be a lot of that going on. Conversely, if it was only possible to succeed at such an attack 10% of the time, you'd never see anyone do it. The balance point of that strategy is somewhere that makes it risky and challenging to execute, and simultaneously rewarding enough when done with the proper timing and precision and skill. Bonus points are awarded, of course, if there are good partial success and failure states for each player.
It's good, necessary even, to have the ability for a player to succeed through early aggression. But, having games feel like a dice roll whether you're just going to lose about 2 minutes in, that's really bad. This is one reason why things like included scout units in Age of Empires games is a phenomenal thing. In Age of Empires 2, the initial scout is an indispensable part of gameplay for a variety of reasons.
Another great example of early scouting is in Red Alert 3, where units like the Attack Dog and Burst Drone are specialized to be able to get around the map quickly and act as scouts. They're not available from the start of the match, which to me is a bit of a disadvantage to Age of Empires 2's dedicated scout unit, but are generally able to get some scouting done or contest areas of the map in advance of many threats or strategies. Red Alert 3 has several other fairly early units that can be used for scouting: the Soviet Terror Drone and Sickle make good scout troops as well, and the Allies have a very early support power that makes it pretty easy to keep tabs on their enemy.
In particular though, a dedicated scout unit really helps the player to keep in mind that they can and should be out on the map seeing what their enemy is up to. Personally, I see this as better than the WarCraft/StarCraft model of committing a worker, and potentially putting yourself at an economy disadvantage, in order to get early intel. As a bonus, a dedicated early scout unit can provide some needed interaction and interest during the often slow ramp-up time at the start of the match, when the player is waiting for stuff to build, or accumulate, et cetera.
On the 'Stability' and Duration of the Early Game
![[image loading]](https://bccasteel.files.wordpress.com/2021/06/2014-07-29_00002.jpg)
So, what do I mean by 'stability' in terms of an early game?
Well, first and foremost, as I said above, the early game in many Command and Conquer titles is really volatile. In Tiberian Dawn, it's not super uncommon to lose like 2 or 3 minutes into a match due to flame trooper/hand of nod rush, or masses of Attack Bikes or Buggies, et cetera. Classically, it was also very common to see APC/Engineer rushes, due to the multiple benefits of capturing an enemy building to sell right away and the tantalizing chance of scoring a ConYard steal and preventing your enemy from building any more structures. This is a prime example of an early game that is not stable. It's really easy to derail a player in a variety of ways, and it's not easy to defend yourself from any of them, and it's also quite difficult to scout these early strategies until they're already hitting you.
Legacy of the Void's economic changes over Heart of the Swarm and Wings of Liberty prove to be an interesting case study in terms of RTS early games. Legacy of the Void, I believe, doubled the number of starting workers from 'classic' StarCraft. There were a host of other changes as well, but this in particular was of interest to me as a designer. Starting the game with more income potential truncated the early game dramatically.
Since the earliest stage of the game is when players have the hardest time reacting to unexpected threats, truncating the early game allows for players to have a more robust defense and offense earlier than previously. It also allowed some rushes and cheese to happen earlier, but in general players have more options and more money to react to their opponent sooner than before, allowing for more robust trading of blows without being crippled. Among other things, it shortened the areas of greatest weakness and vulnerability (while at the same time allowing for larger attacks to happen sooner).
There's also the matter of the 'QuickScript' mod in Grey Goo. Community leader XCet of the Grey Goo Fan Discord "Grey Goo Hangout" created a mod that, through the simple act of refunding the cost of the player's first refinery, cuts what is normally a roughly 7-minute windup in the early game in half and dramatically changes the shape of a competitive Grey Goo match for the better.
In short, I feel like a relatively quick economic ramp-up is one way to achieve some stability, especially in conjunction with other efforts.
On the flip side, Company of Heroes 2 has a relatively stable early game. Losing a squad is pretty bad, especially early in the game, but it's also fairly uncommon if you're paying attention. Also, a lost squad or two is probably recoverable due to the fact that the game's manpower resource is accumulated more slowly the more units a player has under their command. In COH2, you're mostly losing the negligible cost of a model in a squad and travel time as the squad retreats back to your base/starting area, then heals up, then walks back to where you need them to be.
The other thing that Company of Heroes has going for it in terms of 'stability' is that there's a lot of stuff to focus on instead of just the other player.
As with everything in terms of optimal RTS design, the length of the 'early game' is a matter of somewhat delicate precision. As Command and Conquer Tiberian Dawn/Remaster shows us (I covered this above) if it's too short, and there too many options that can be pulled out before they can be scouted or defended, it can really hurt a game. No one wants that 'dice roll' on match start to see whether the game will get interesting.
![[image loading]](https://www.4gamer.net/games/559/G055911/20210316062/SS/006.jpg)
Thinking of 'stability' in the early game, the upcoming RTS 'Immortal: Gates of Pyre' has capturable turrets on the map in various places. Notably, each player starts with one of these turrets in their base, already owned by the player at match start. These turrets serve a role similar to the Age of Empires Town Center, helping keep the player's base safe during the early game when unit counts are still low. WarCraft 3, with Ziggurat turrets, Night Elf Ancients having attacks, garrisonable Orc Burrows and building spikes, et cetera, has similar protection for bases in the early and mid-game, though mostly these defenses don't really stem off a dedicated force in a meaningful way, that I've usually seen.
My general rule is that the economy should ramp up relatively quickly, while the player's ability to get crippling damage into their enemy's stuff should ramp up more slowly, and be balanced against the ability to get scouting information on what your opponent is planning. Of course, I repeat that Company of Heroes 2 is an example of a much more protracted early game that plays out in a generally positive manner due to the player's ability to keep their investments from being destroyed.
Refining the Early Game, A Summary
"The beginning is the most important
part of the work"
- Plato
Above, I try to lay out some of the various strengths and weaknesses of the 'early game' phase of RTS. This is really important to strategy games in general since they're one of the only genres of competitive game with such a long and uncertain ramp-up. In a shooter, you don't have a 5-to-7 minute window before you're really ready to take on your opponent, and being shot doesn't (usually, anyway?) reduce your ability to participate in the game for the rest of the round.
Length: it feels like a short early game in terms of economic expansion, and a slightly longer game in terms of crippling offensive options, allows for the most robust counter-play between players while still feeling 'fair.' Couple this with a built-in scouting option similar to what is seen in the Age of Empires games, and the players are well-equipped for an early game that can have encounters and exciting play, but is less 'unstable' in terms of how easy it is to be knocked out, increasing game equilibrium.
Fairly robust defensive options early can help as well. Consider the Age of Empires Town Center, which serves as effective army deterrent in the early game but doesn't scale well into the mid and late game (where walls, trebuchets, huge army sizes, castles etc come into play). And lastly, in general, I am much in favor of relatively straightforward in terms of offered buildings/options/unlocks, that present the player with a 'pathway' into the mid-game and do their best to limit false choices and player confusion.
If I have additional thoughts later, I might revisit the topic. For now, I worry I've gotten overly wordy. Thanks for reading, and I hope to see you on the battlefield!
This article is something I wrote for my game design blog. You can take a look there if you want.
 
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I feel that early game is one of the weak points of RTS games. It's highly repetitive and most often RTS designers tried to make the player do stuff by making macro more challenging early on, but that still makes it something a really dumb bot could do better. It's better in some games like AoE2 where you have some map-based minigames like deer-pushing or boar-pulling and Wc3 where creeping becomes a factor somewhat early, but I've yet to see an RTS where I prefer playing the early game to every other game state and pretty much all the matches I remember were games where the players hit the mid-game on somewhat even terms.
In a lot of RTS the S stands for rockpaperScissor, because that's quite often what strategy comes down to early on when you play blind into all kinds of cheeses or greeds. The more power the player has before scouting becomes a factor to either greed or rush the less strategic the game usually becomes because the game never becomes even-ish and that's the requirement for deep interactions.
It's one of the reasons I'm not sure the genre really benefits from the imperfect information part, because while I like fog and mirror, there should be a setup needed to blindside your enemy and that's all too often not the case.
Compare that to MobAs where you define your strategy bit by bit while seeing what your opponent is building and where you still have an early game that gives newer players some time to get used to stuff. Or with 4x titles which often skip the buildup part almost entirely and let you fight from day1.
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I feel that early game is one of the weak points of RTS games.
I 100% agree! I didn't try to tackle the repetitive aspect of RTS, though you made a great point hitting AOE2 and WarCraft 3 in your response.
In a lot of RTS the S stands for rockpaperScissor
This is one of the things I tried to address in my article. I think starting scout units like you see in (most?) Age of Empires games is a good way to try to minimize that, as well as designers taking a hard look at their economic vs army ramp up rates. If your economy ramps up faster than your ability to tech/get game-ending damage out, then you have 'free' resources to spend on defenses. I also like buildings having default or built-in defenses, like the Ancients from WarCraft 3 or Ziggurats getting upgraded with various turrets, though base defenses in WarCraft 3 always felt a little weak to me personally.
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On June 21 2021 22:51 waywardstrategy wrote:I 100% agree! I didn't try to tackle the repetitive aspect of RTS, though you made a great point hitting AOE2 and WarCraft 3 in your response. This is one of the things I tried to address in my article. I think starting scout units like you see in (most?) Age of Empires games is a good way to try to minimize that, as well as designers taking a hard look at their economic vs army ramp up rates. If your economy ramps up faster than your ability to tech/get game-ending damage out, then you have 'free' resources to spend on defenses. I also like buildings having default or built-in defenses, like the Ancients from WarCraft 3 or Ziggurats getting upgraded with various turrets, though base defenses in WarCraft 3 always felt a little weak to me personally.
I agree on the economy ramp vs army ramp up rates, but another way to look at it is to check how economy is growing. Games like DoW and Bfme make map control equivalent to economy, so both players are forced to push out units and the decisions are more about when to tech and where to fortify. They limit the player's ability to greed, in turn creating aggressive early games that are rarely straight up game loosing (except for DoW3). I always preferred that over f.e. sc2 where a missed force-field, missed drop or lowered supply depot can immediately doom players because early economic damage is almost un-recoverable. But that ties a bit back into how weak defensive advantage in sc2 and how brutal dps is.
On the flip side these strong constraints basically enforce a standard, limiting build variety and longevity. I'm just often wondering whether the games wouldn't be better if you straight skipped the early game and got to the point where both sides have a bunch of troops, scouts, economy and are ready to tech or gear up. Like you describe accelerating the early game was one of the bigger changes in LotV and imo it did the game good.
I feel like in age I'd like to start with 2 scouts, one near the enemy base and one in mine, because it's really important to catch your sheep, push your deer, find close reliquaries... Like AoE2 is one of these RTS where I want to scout the entire map as early as possible because it really has long-lasting consequences. Really makes me wonder if the game wouldn't be better if you started with the map revealed or at least more revealed around your base. But yeah I prefer this a lot over blizz' model too where you need to sacc eco for reliable scouting info.
In general I think people weren't drastic enough with changing the early game and always tried to band-aid a broken system. Now it's probably far too late, which is a bit of a shame.
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On the flip side these strong constraints basically enforce a standard, limiting build variety and longevity. I'm just often wondering whether the games wouldn't be better if you straight skipped the early game and got to the point where both sides have a bunch of troops, scouts, economy and are ready to tech or gear up. Like you describe accelerating the early game was one of the bigger changes in LotV and imo it did the game good.
I like this idea too but the downside to this is, I think it'd create a lot more confusion for players in the early game. They get a bunch of stuff thrown at them they have to learn and not a lot of time to learn it. I think there's probably a way to meet in the middle as it were (something like COH2 comes to mind, where the Brits and USF have pre-defined bases that you just 'activate' the buildings over time instead of building them individually).
In general I think people weren't drastic enough with changing the early game and always tried to band-aid a broken system. Now it's probably far too late, which is a bit of a shame.
Possibly true though I think there's always room for innovation. It's just a matter of 'selling' it to players and trying to work out the kinks. The old systems have the advantage of being refined continually since the mid-90s and a new system has to 'feel' good from the get go to take off.
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On June 22 2021 02:53 waywardstrategy wrote:Show nested quote +On the flip side these strong constraints basically enforce a standard, limiting build variety and longevity. I'm just often wondering whether the games wouldn't be better if you straight skipped the early game and got to the point where both sides have a bunch of troops, scouts, economy and are ready to tech or gear up. Like you describe accelerating the early game was one of the bigger changes in LotV and imo it did the game good.
I like this idea too but the downside to this is, I think it'd create a lot more confusion for players in the early game. They get a bunch of stuff thrown at them they have to learn and not a lot of time to learn it. I think there's probably a way to meet in the middle as it were (something like COH2 comes to mind, where the Brits and USF have pre-defined bases that you just 'activate' the buildings over time instead of building them individually).
I'd prolly design it in the way that in campaign or in the default skirmish vs AI you build normally and in PvP you skip the early game. The pure PvE players often care a lot about their sim-city and seeing it grow and the PvP players might play a bunch of bot matches to get ready for ladder and learn the tech tree.
On June 22 2021 02:53 waywardstrategy wrote:Show nested quote +In general I think people weren't drastic enough with changing the early game and always tried to band-aid a broken system. Now it's probably far too late, which is a bit of a shame. Possibly true though I think there's always room for innovation. It's just a matter of 'selling' it to players and trying to work out the kinks. The old systems have the advantage of being refined continually since the mid-90s and a new system has to 'feel' good from the get go to take off.
Idk, my impression is that a lot of the competitive RTS crowd moved away and most of the players who still buy RTS buy them for the PvE. I don't think DoW3 was a terrible PvP game f.e., but it had a disastrous launch and the most common criticism I read was that the campaign was mediocre and there was no PvE skirmish option. Tbf the PvP map pool was terrible. But so was Sc2's.
But I honestly think that RTS has become a niche genre that is dominated by a bunch of highly refined games that are mostly from a time where RTS were major sellers. So like you say a new game has to match a refinement level of games that were half lucky accidents and half masterpieces and satisfy a crowd that mostly plays 1-2 games from 20-25 years ago. So even if devs got that level of balancing and refinement right I'm not sure a lot of people would switch, simply because a lot of them just want their old recipe from their childhood.
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I would like to think there is still a future for competitive RTS, though perhaps I'm just biased since that's the perspective from which I'm writing.
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extremely interesting blog post. thanks for taking the time to write this.
On June 22 2021 04:36 waywardstrategy wrote:
I would like to think there is still a future for competitive RTS, though perhaps I'm just biased since that's the perspective from which I'm writing.
competitive RTS will always have a niche. Similarly competitive dot eating maze games a la early 80s still have a niche. Similarly, competitive Super Tecmo Bowl from the early 90s will always have a niche market.
However, all these game genres time in at their apex has long since passed. Improving technology offers consumers more choices than it did in 1982 or 1991 or 1999. Consumers have moved on.
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I think RTS has more of a future than pac man or tecmo bowl haha
Also I'd argue that it's not technology that's left RTS behind? I think there's a lot of mixed signals over what players want from a competitive strategy game, or even if that's something that's still wanted but hasn't really been delivered on.
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On June 22 2021 06:59 waywardstrategy wrote:
I think RTS has more of a future than pac man or tecmo bowl haha
Also I'd argue that it's not technology that's left RTS behind? I think there's a lot of mixed signals over what players want from a competitive strategy game, or even if that's something that's still wanted but hasn't really been delivered on.
1v1 is lonely. 5v5 with voice comms with all your team mates is silly , stupid , fun.
Two people playing a competitive low latency action game in 1996 was the cutting edge of tech for the average consumer. 2 players connecting with low latency was the best the average consumer could expect in 1996. For its time, it was cool. The best competitive games before 1996 occurred in the same living room or arcade.
By 2006, 10 player team games were formable as inexpensive broadband arrived and gave consumers more choice than existed in 1996.
Consumers opted for 10 player team games over lonely 1v1 contests.
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On June 22 2021 07:50 JimmyJRaynor wrote:Show nested quote +On June 22 2021 06:59 waywardstrategy wrote:
I think RTS has more of a future than pac man or tecmo bowl haha
Also I'd argue that it's not technology that's left RTS behind? I think there's a lot of mixed signals over what players want from a competitive strategy game, or even if that's something that's still wanted but hasn't really been delivered on. 1v1 is lonely. 5v5 with voice comms with all your team mates is silly , stupid , fun. Two people playing a competitive low latency action game in 1996 was the cutting edge of tech for the average consumer. 2 players connecting with low latency was the best the average consumer could expect in 1996. For its time, it was cool. The best competitive games before 1996 occurred in the same living room or arcade. By 2006, 10 player team games were formable as inexpensive broadband arrived and gave consumers more choice than existed in 1996. Consumers opted for 10 player team games over lonely 1v1 contests.
I mean RTS tried team modes and while it always drew some community, it didn't draw a ton. You could argue that unlike team shooters or MobAs they aren't build for that, but imo there was rarely a huge difference in quality between most RTS team games and single player games.
RTS just has a bunch of fundamental problems and a very conservative community. It's stressful as hell without any serious breaks, it's quite often RTs, as in APM are THE deciding factor more than in any other game type I know and arguably one of the two main differences between a really good and a really bad player (the other being practice/polishing), it has phases in which you still need to spam despite nothing happening (the aforementioned early game f.e.) and it has some fundamental differences between what different groups of people want from it.
Viewers want explosive fights, non-stop action and even games, PvP players need a bit of slow phases to recover and not too explosive fights else the game becomes extremely punishing, but want to feel that an advantage really matters and need clear visuals annd PvE players often want sim-city and a pretty, bubbling world. These things contradict each other a lot.
I think the way forward would be to take a second look at the game mechanics and rework the parts that create the snowball (dps, map control, defender's advantage), ramp up aggression earlier but more slowly and go low on the macro mechanics, but games like DoW2 f.e. tried to do some of that and never reached a MP success that was noteworthy. It also arguably sucks as a viewer sports. DoW3 tried to do a bunch of stuff and while it failed spectacularly on some, some of the most common criticisms came back to the RTS community hating everything that reminds them of a MobA. Like some of the most upvoted criticism was literally "starting towers are a moba element", as if AoE didn't have TCs and SupCom it's commander.
Which I still find baffling, because MobA grew out of the RTS and in a lot of ways addresses the problems mentioned before, so looking at how they address that and try to put it into a commander-game makes perfect sense.
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On June 22 2021 17:08 Archeon wrote:Show nested quote +On June 22 2021 07:50 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On June 22 2021 06:59 waywardstrategy wrote:
I think RTS has more of a future than pac man or tecmo bowl haha
Also I'd argue that it's not technology that's left RTS behind? I think there's a lot of mixed signals over what players want from a competitive strategy game, or even if that's something that's still wanted but hasn't really been delivered on. 1v1 is lonely. 5v5 with voice comms with all your team mates is silly , stupid , fun. Two people playing a competitive low latency action game in 1996 was the cutting edge of tech for the average consumer. 2 players connecting with low latency was the best the average consumer could expect in 1996. For its time, it was cool. The best competitive games before 1996 occurred in the same living room or arcade. By 2006, 10 player team games were formable as inexpensive broadband arrived and gave consumers more choice than existed in 1996. Consumers opted for 10 player team games over lonely 1v1 contests. I mean RTS tried team modes and while it always drew some community, it didn't draw a ton. You could argue that unlike team shooters or MobAs they aren't build for that, but imo there was rarely a huge difference in quality between most RTS team games and single player games.
the main point i'm making is that a 5v5 MOBA was not possible in 1985 or 1995. By 2005 the MOBA was technically feasible. The excitement around new tech creating new choices made the voice comms MOBA the average consumer's first choice in 2005.
Had the 5v5 online MOBA with voice comms been possible in 1976 ... I doubt Taito's Space Invaders makes the equivalent of $7Billion USD in the late 1970s.
As technology improves consumers have more choice and they reject great genre defining games of the past like Space Invaders, Pac-man, Starcraft, Doom, Super Tecmo Bowl etc.
Super Tecmo Bowl was THE game to buy with the NES.
Nuttin' will bring Space Invaders, Doom1 or Starcraft back to mainstream large scale success. All these games and genres can continue to enjoy success in a niche market though.
RTS people will concede that the Gallery Shooter ( Space Invaders) , the Dot-Eating Maze Game (Pacman) ,and the 1v1 Couch Competitive Sports Title ( Super Tecmo Bowl //EA NHL '94) were all genres destined to experience giant declines due to improving tech.
IMO, RTS people are so married to the RTS genre they usually can't see the forest through the trees; they often push back on the notion that the 1v1 RTS was destined to experience a steep decline like all other genres before it. Somehow RTS is different and should somehow live on forever in the mainstream.
RTS is no different than any of these other genres. Once improving tech gave the average consumer new choices they did not have before 2005 the average consumer moved on.
Nothing will bring RTS, Gallery Shooters, Dot Eating Maze Games, and 1v1 couch competitive Sports games back.
I suggest enjoying all these genres for what they are.... in their own right ... they're all great. I play MsPacman against my grandmother. We have fun. I play EA NHL '94 against the CEO and CIO of my #1 customer. We have a blast. I do the commentary. Its silly , stupid fun and it prevents us from taking ourselves too seriously. 
And, speaking of game genres that experienced steep declines but still live on...
A Gallery Shooter and a Dot-Eating-Maze Game are on sale on Steam. Galaga and Pacman! ! !
https://store.steampowered.com/sub/90320/
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the main point i'm making is that a 5v5 MOBA was not possible in 1985 or 1995. By 2005 the MOBA was technically feasible. The excitement around new tech creating new choices made the voice comms MOBA the average consumer's first choice in 2005.
And the main point I'm making is... "These are some things I think could improve early games in RTS, generally speaking."
RTS is my passion. In some ways, it doesn't matter to me, as a writer on the subject of the design of strategy games, whether 2 or 2 million people play the games. (When) I have time to write, I often choose to write about game design, and (when) I do, it seems that Team Liquid is a decent place to share those thoughts, to see what people think of those thoughts. I don't think design ideas are worth too much unless they're tested and challenged.
RTS is no different than any of these other genres. Once improving tech gave the average consumer new choices they did not have before 2005 the average consumer moved on
For what it's worth, I think you might be drawing a bit too straight a line here, personally. I don't think we're going to convince each other - frankly I feel like it's possible you'd be making a similar point almost no matter my topic, since (again) I'm not really writing about The Triumphal Return of The RTS Genre, I'm writing (at this point) about the early game phase of RTS, broadly speaking. But, just as kind of a counter example: FPS, RPGs, sports games, and racing games have a lineage that extends pretty far back in gaming history and all of those genres continue to be popular today. So it seems to me that technology is not a straight-line indicator of success or popularity, per se.
![[image loading]](https://www.nicepng.com/png/detail/264-2649047_turbo-tastic-wreck-it-ralph-turbo-pixel.png)
However, I think your thoughts on genre development and technology would make for a wonderful series of blog posts, and this platform would be an excellent carrier of those thoughts. If you choose to write them up and I feel that I have anything meaningful to contribute, I'd be happy to respond to your thoughts in a future post.
But again, to me: I'll happily be the weird guy off in the corner trying to make the next cool iteration of the dot-muncher, by myself. And I'll happily share my thoughts about iterating on the design of passed-by relics that catch my fancy, and to share them in places where the fans of those passed-by relics might see them and judge their value.
In the meantime, RTS seems to be having a pretty good year in 2021, with Immortal, Homeworld 3, Age of Empires 4, and a couple of other promising titles on the horizon.
Thanks for reading my article and taking the time to share your thoughts. Have a good one!
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I find game design discussions interesting, so I enjoy your blog. I really hope that I'm wrong and RTS will see a new advent. But I strongly doubt it, because the group that plays it isn't homogeneous and without getting multiple of the subgroups to buy it's tough to get your money back. And beating the old greats in polishing is rough, even if we disregard the rose colored lenses.
I also think that RTS aren't that great as competitive games (it's good that few people reread blogs, else people would murder me on this site), because there are a bunch of problems that makes it less exciting to watch. Namely map control and economy create snowballs, high dps makes for nice viewing but bad gameplay and boy is the early game boring to watch and play. There's also a problem with repetitiveness. I still like to watch them occasionally, but Dota f.e. is a much more complex and deep game than Sc2 or AoE2 and you can pick up a lot of that complexity even as a mid-tier viewer.
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I don't really have anything to add to this discussion, but it was a very interesting read. Thanks for taking your time to post it here =)
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IMO the problem with every RTS early game is that it's just boring for viewers.
Even tastosis are SO BORED of all the development in ZvT. You can hear their anguish as, yet again, 1 reaper duels 2 zerglings, in a match that's already several minutes in.
When I watch matches I always skip until midgame...
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Imo it's boring for the players as well, going through the same steps every game isn't very interesting. But it's an extra large problem in Blizz rts model where you can basically invest in the economy in an unlimited amount early on and as a result you either get passive play of greedy players who try to maximize their economy while staying alive and getting some scouting info in or you get all-ins that need to do a ton of damage because else the greedy player gets ahead.
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Early game is my favorite part. It saddens and ultimately made me quit SC2 since they basically eliminated all early game strategy and put a fast forward button onto the midgame and macro in favor of spectatorship/esports.
If you take a look at BW 4 and 5 pools it's actually a winning strategy most of the time because its so seldomly pulled out, but its always there as a check and balance for the greedy players etc. All you need is map making to control for early game stratagem.
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EPT![[image loading]](https://th.bing.com/th/id/Rb4e4b62df186230dbfbd1b879c082629?rik=pOPf%2bKmptQEQqA&riu=http%3a%2f%2fstatic.giantbomb.com%2fuploads%2foriginal%2f8%2f82063%2f2699258-lotv-wide(1).jpg&ehk=vhqIdeg%2fniIhAxhTJpYCxATp%2b3VsPGdO6mmTIbIlrJc%3d&risl=&pid=ImgRaw)
