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I just always read these RTS discussions and go man, people are talking about the star on the the Christmas tree when the base isn't even screwed in yet. It's just funny to read about the intricacies of micro when we still don't seem to have dev interest in or much discussion about:
- ways to convince the player to be less of a potato and learn somewhat challenging things
- designing a game that's fun to lose and, adjacently, eradicating ladder anxiety
- genuinely putting fun first above all other goals which do not matter (pretty pictures, dev ego, 40 million different modes, cinematics, blah blah blah)
I've spent many months on very meticulous visuals related to RTS and recently have thought that it's utterly pointless to care at all about how any of this shit looks if it's truly in service of a game. A game of triangles, circles and squares on a black background where grey tiles represent high ground could be the most fun thing ever made and the next gen RTS that people gobble up like Slay the Spire or Hollow Knight. It has absolutely sunk in that fun is not put first in most games and especially RTS and I'm tempted to save a whole lot of my own time and make cylinders shoot trapezoids in the style of Xiao Xiao movies to prove the point  . But it's ultimately a job for a passionate dev and not a visual artist, so maybe a more technical dude gets inspired and makes something like that happen.
Apologies for the rant and not specifically talking about ZeroSpace, it's just funny to read discussions about minute details that largely have no impact if the much more fundamental shit is fumbled or ignored. And I only bring it up because it often is fumbled or ignored.
Essentially, it has sunk in for me that people focus on the wrong things and by making a stick figure RTS where the systems are ape and units move in a cool way and everything has personality despite itself, one could prove it. I want to resonate with the unit that looks like a jenga piece that stands upright and shoots down like a hunter killer from T2 and maybe someone else loves the softball unit that floats around and zaps shit. Could take a year to make and run on an old toaster and be heaps more fun than StarCraft 2 :O
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On February 20 2026 17:43 RogerChillingworth wrote:
ways to convince the player to be less of a potato and learn somewhat challenging things
That is usually what a campaign does for most RTS. Start from moving single units, fighting. Adding in a base. Adding in more complex units and multi tasking to complete the later missions.
That progression might not be as required now a days as most potential customers has played a similar game already. If it becomes a mass hit there will be tons of guides made outside the game and people helping people anyhow.
I think the opposite of you. The game has to be fun as a potato. People will do challenging things if they stick around (20 years into AoE 2 the average skill level is much higher by time spent, while a bunch just have fun as a potato. The only problem you have to solve to get people to do complex things is to make them play enough of the game while the option to do them is there and they look fun/brag-worthy///.
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On February 20 2026 22:43 Yurie wrote:Show nested quote +On February 20 2026 17:43 RogerChillingworth wrote:
ways to convince the player to be less of a potato and learn somewhat challenging things
I think the opposite of you. The game has to be fun as a potato. People will do challenging things if they stick around (20 years into AoE 2 the average skill level is much higher by time spent, while a bunch just have fun as a potato. The only problem you have to solve to get people to do complex things is to make them play enough of the game while the option to do them is there and they look fun/brag-worthy///.
I didn't say it shouldn't be fun as a potato. But people design for potatoes by straight up removing things that are deemed difficult, like automating the economy or eliminating base building or even putting in all-army hotkeys or whatever else, instead of being like how can we make this more fun, or even acknowledging that it is fun.
Like Brood War is a great game but RTS can be way more fun than Brood War to play. Doesn't mean we have to get rid of what makes that game great.
Anyways it's too long of a tangential discussion to get into all of it here but I just listed those bullet points as more fundamental things that don't seem to be goals by many devs, and yet years upon years of work is put into all these other things, built on mostly infertile ground. Reminds me sometimes of how the best artists in the world worked on Star Wars Phantom Menace and it was written by George Lucas LMAO.
I get that fun is an abstract concept and actually making a finished game is much different from theory crafting on the internet. But it's like a completely different road people are on. I guess I'm just a boomer.
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That's kind of the thing though - RTS games have a shitload of moving parts (in the sense of design) and if "just make it fun" were easy people would just do that. In reality you've got to design all the stuff that answers the questions "Okay but how important IS micro" and "How potato-friendly do we want economy management to be?" and all of these questions aren't just free to be like "MAKE IT AS FUN FOR POTATO PLAYERS AS POSSIBLE" without it dramatically impacting other aspects.
That said, the Red Alert series definitely stands as something that chased fun moreso than 'good game design' or whatever. Generally yeah I'd agree a lot of currently developed RTS feel like they suffer from not having clear design goals outside of "god I hope we magically become starcraft 3"
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Heck even something like Battlerite is just that combat part distilled and all those games lose players until they are gone.
I am glad you are bringing this up because the reason MOBA's work and Arena/brawler games not is that they are just pure fights in a smaller isolated arena. They can be fun for a little while but usually you want a game with a larger map and more moving components to create real depth.
RTS games can offer this experience to a comparable to perhaps even larger extent than MOBA's.
What RTS games offer that MOBA's don't is that you can fully control the game. You can great competitive experience on a more consistent basis than in a snowball heavy MOBA. You can watch high level plays do amazing things and try and copy parts of their style and strategies, in MOBA's you can't do that to the same extent.
RTS offers something unique that MOBA's cannot do because MOBA's has to be a teamgame. RTS do not need to be teamgames to work out and they do not need to have this whole levelling-snowball scaling that can create an extremely frustrating experience.
MOBA's have other advantages, and I think most people will prefer not being forced into multitasking which is a component of competitive RTS games. However, I think the multitasking of RTS games is still fine and can be an enjoyable component for a reasonable percentage of the MOBA target audience - as long as the micro is designed well.
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For me it still comes back to having a unique experience. Arena games are short enough that they become repetitive fast. RTS is often 1vs1 and thus become repetitive fast as they are too hard to balance to allow for high diversity in optimal strategy. Perhaps the largest issue is actually the ladder, it pushes you to improve which in turn pushes you to limit strategic variance and thus makes the game samey.
In RTS PvE you often have a higher allowance for non-optimal strategies as long as they work. The expectation isn't to always speed run it with the single best strategy.
This is as always personal preference. I don't play 1vs1 fighters, FPS or anything like that. I didn't even like it in card games. I don't enjoy them. I enjoy them more in RTS but it doesn't work for me overall.
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LOL. 100% true. Goes for all online discourse though. There is no point to anything roflmao. But it's honestly like releasing pressure from your brain or taking a shit. SOMETIMES A LIL KNUCKLE CRACK.
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On February 21 2026 01:37 Fleetfeet wrote:
That's kind of the thing though - RTS games have a shitload of moving parts (in the sense of design) and if "just make it fun" were easy people would just do that. In reality you've got to design all the stuff that answers the questions "Okay but how important IS micro" and "How potato-friendly do we want economy management to be?" and all of these questions aren't just free to be like "MAKE IT AS FUN FOR POTATO PLAYERS AS POSSIBLE" without it dramatically impacting other aspects.
That said, the Red Alert series definitely stands as something that chased fun moreso than 'good game design' or whatever. Generally yeah I'd agree a lot of currently developed RTS feel like they suffer from not having clear design goals outside of "god I hope we magically become starcraft 3"
Totally agree.
It's not as simple as 'just make it fun', that's certainly true, but it's definitely within reach to look back on your most fun moments as a player, or just most fun times in your life, and deconstruct that shit to atoms to find essences and universal truths, and make some strong connections. I do this frequently tbh and while I can't say it results in ironclad, play-tested, peer-reviewed, tangibly fun shit inside a game, because I'm not a developer, it feels like a starting point that a lot of devs aren't starting at. Instead they're like UHHHH... WHAT'S OUR TANK UNIT???? ALSO WHOA, GOTTA HAVE A MARINE...gURRRBLUrghgknfkmj //*has stroke*
Anyways Bersitis is right. I'm gonna embalm myself and be back in 150 years to say the same shit. But internally, the whole time, I'm experiencing the awful Mars death from Total Recall.
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For me it still comes back to having a unique experience. Arena games are short enough that they become repetitive fast. RTS is often 1vs1 and thus become repetitive fast as they are too hard to balance to allow for high diversity in optimal strategy. Perhaps the largest issue is actually the ladder, it pushes you to improve which in turn pushes you to limit strategic variance and thus makes the game samey.
I think RTS can have same variety as MOBA's. The reason they don't is we are stuck with fixed races and things rarely get matched.
My vision for the genre is to allow units to be selected prior to the game. Get away with races - imo it's a very poor and outdated way to generate diversity in games. I think certain components of the different races are fun and would like to mix. Why not allow that? Instead the barrier to learn a new race is super high preventing this from happening.
To give Battle Aces some credit, it tried "innovating" in some areas, but IMO went 180 the wrong direction when it comes to micro and strategic-depth.
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It's not as simple as 'just make it fun', that's certainly true, but it's definitely within reach to look back on your most fun moments as a player, or just most fun times in your life, and deconstruct that shit to atoms to find essences and universal truths, and make some strong connections. I do this frequently tbh and while I can't say it results in ironclad, play-tested, peer-reviewed, tangibly fun shit inside a game, because I'm not a developer, it feels like a starting point that a lot of devs aren't starting at. Instead they're like UHHHH... WHAT'S OUR TANK UNIT???? ALSO WHOA, GOTTA HAVE A MARINE...gURRRBLUrghgknfkmj //*has stroke*
I think you are correct in being able find the essences/generalize concepts as to what makes a fun game. When you figured that out you can adapt these concepts to new situations.
One of the concepts I believe in is that "movement-based" micro is a vital part of RTS micro. Abilities can encourage movement-based micro. Abilities that don't, such as spammy heal-based button are generally for micro (Frostgiant did not follow this concept).
However, what matters more is the ability to iterate on your ideas, get objective feedback, learn and improve. Your first iteration is unlikely to be good. And at some point you lose the ability to evaluate your own ideas. Thus you need to clearly define your target group and have them evaluate/play-test/provide feedback.
As you do this over time, you discover and refine the concepts as to what makes for a good playing experience.
I think all of the Frostgiant, Battle Aces, Zerospace and Gates of Pyre were stuck in their own echo chamber. Only using feedback from a very narrow part of the target group.
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EPT
