This problem is because this was a huge problem rtses had historically, so the only people who stuck around to play them were the psychopaths who enjoy that feeling. So the genre continued to develop to appeal to said psychopaths, instead of actually fixing the problem.
Graviteam Tactics avoids this problem by being so realistic that if you micromanage things and spam commands your men get confused and will start having trouble coordinating with each other and generally being effective in combat. Like real people do when micromanaged like that. I wish more games punished micro like that.
Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm is turn-based, but it has a similar system. You control literally dozens of not hundreds of units, but the number of commands you can issue per turn is limited, so you're encouraged to move units in large groups and only micromanage where absolutely necessary.
Also, it has a campaign where you reunify Germany as the DDR. :honecker-interesting:
in the newest age of empires there was (maybe still is?) a way you could get ranged units to have a faster rate of fire by clicking on a unit and then clicking away to retreat for like half a second and then clicking again. Strategy lmao
There are also several units that are designed to only be used this way, and are literally worthless if you don't constantly do bullshit like that. Which are in turn countered by your opponent hitting the button even faster than you are.
This leads to the fun gameplay of constantly watching this one unit to make sure you are hitting the button fast enough, and if you blink or look away for the wrong three seconds you lose your entire formation of said unit. Said unit is also the only effective counter to infantry spam that doesn't lose you just as much resources as it took your enemy to build said infantry.
Why not? I agree if it's a round based game, but in a real time game your actions in real time determine the outcome. Of course you can put a limit to the complexity, but that will very quickly put a skill ceiling to what is possible in your game.
Also you don't need to be hitting those 300 APM to enjoy the game. There are people with one hand that reached decent ranks in StarCraft 2 with barely 70 apm. The limit for most RTS players is a mental one, getting disorganized and distracted like OP. Not a matter of finger speed.
The Starcraft Model deliberately bakes excessive complexity & hyper-specific unit functionality into the game rather than allowing complexity to evolve naturally out of otherwise simple to understand principles
StarCraft units are mostly, apart from the spellcasters, very basic. Fast weak ranged unit. Fast cheap melee unit. Flying unit that can hit ground. Flying unit that can hit air. Slow splash damage unit. I can explain every unit except maybe the Dark Archon and the Defiler in like 4 to 5 words and you would get it.
The reason people still play StarCraft isn't because it's complex unit design but precisely because of the insane emergent gameplay and strategy that is STILL developing after 23 years of being played to death in a million professional matches.
I'm not arguing this is going to be fun for most people. It's certainly not. The UI is unbearable if you played any game in the last 15 years. But it's probably the most beautiful competitive game ever made.
Because it's bad when the interface is the antagonist and not the other player. You shouldn't feel like you're fighting to make the units do what you want them to do. Your skill is just overcoming bad design.
I hate to do this, but Day9 (probably the only good gamer) has this covered extremely well in this video: Pathfinding and Micro in SC. I know it's rude to just link a 35 min vid, but it's well worth your time.
Long story short: Better UI/Pathfinding/Simplification doesn't equal a "better" game. Just because something feels easier, doesn't mean it's actually for the better of the game or your enjoyment.
It's not skill though. It's more like an IQ test that's is less trainable. It's practically a measure of your working memory and nothing else. True APM(not spamming commands) isn't trainable like most things that are classically considered skills is.
That's a very bold claim. What makes clicking buttons in a certain way different from other muscle memory exercises (i.e. almost every single sport)? You learn the required moves, you automate it and suddenly you free your brain to do something else. Certainly there are talents, but everyone can learn to play StarCraft if they choose to. It's not magic.
You just have to keep track of all the units in your head at the same time, keep them in the right order, and recall them all consistently with the correct timing. That is literally the definition of working memory. This is not a trainable skill. You can train yourself to be faster at turning your memory into action, but you cannot improve your memory, your timing, or your precision. Those are all things that your brain sets a hard limit on at a biological level, and it is not something that can grow once your brain is done developing as a child.
This is the main limitation of your performance in classic rts games like AOE, StarCraft, etc. It's the equivalent of having a game where you have to identify color patterns that are invisible to colorblind people and saying that fixing this removes skill from the game. It's disguising intrinsic biological factors as skill. Except in the case of the colorblindness example, it would be a lot easier to just change the color pallette of a game to fix this, and in a classic rts the game is broken at a fundamental level.
This is something Starcraft does wrong, Starcraft 2 never fixed, Dawn of War (at least the first) did perfectly, yet the entire industry pretends like SC is the only game that exists.
Big ESports is dedicated to repeating the same destroy-your-mouse cave-man style gameplay and resists innovation at all costs.
There are also games which avoid this by simply not having a base building component.
I know there are others, but Myth and Myth 2 are the ones I thought of first (of course, the trade off is you have to be much more meticulous while commanding because you only have a set number of soldiers per map)
This problem is because this was a huge problem rtses had historically, so the only people who stuck around to play them were the psychopaths who enjoy that feeling. So the genre continued to develop to appeal to said psychopaths, instead of actually fixing the problem.
Graviteam Tactics avoids this problem by being so realistic that if you micromanage things and spam commands your men get confused and will start having trouble coordinating with each other and generally being effective in combat. Like real people do when micromanaged like that. I wish more games punished micro like that.
Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm is turn-based, but it has a similar system. You control literally dozens of not hundreds of units, but the number of commands you can issue per turn is limited, so you're encouraged to move units in large groups and only micromanage where absolutely necessary.
Also, it has a campaign where you reunify Germany as the DDR. :honecker-interesting:
Shit I need to give this a go
punishing micro is so wack what. it’s a game you should be able to express skill
If it's a strategy game you shouldn't be able to win because you can physically click faster than your opponent.
in the newest age of empires there was (maybe still is?) a way you could get ranged units to have a faster rate of fire by clicking on a unit and then clicking away to retreat for like half a second and then clicking again. Strategy lmao
There are also several units that are designed to only be used this way, and are literally worthless if you don't constantly do bullshit like that. Which are in turn countered by your opponent hitting the button even faster than you are.
This leads to the fun gameplay of constantly watching this one unit to make sure you are hitting the button fast enough, and if you blink or look away for the wrong three seconds you lose your entire formation of said unit. Said unit is also the only effective counter to infantry spam that doesn't lose you just as much resources as it took your enemy to build said infantry.
Why not? I agree if it's a round based game, but in a real time game your actions in real time determine the outcome. Of course you can put a limit to the complexity, but that will very quickly put a skill ceiling to what is possible in your game.
Also you don't need to be hitting those 300 APM to enjoy the game. There are people with one hand that reached decent ranks in StarCraft 2 with barely 70 apm. The limit for most RTS players is a mental one, getting disorganized and distracted like OP. Not a matter of finger speed.
deleted by creator
StarCraft units are mostly, apart from the spellcasters, very basic. Fast weak ranged unit. Fast cheap melee unit. Flying unit that can hit ground. Flying unit that can hit air. Slow splash damage unit. I can explain every unit except maybe the Dark Archon and the Defiler in like 4 to 5 words and you would get it.
The reason people still play StarCraft isn't because it's complex unit design but precisely because of the insane emergent gameplay and strategy that is STILL developing after 23 years of being played to death in a million professional matches.
I'm not arguing this is going to be fun for most people. It's certainly not. The UI is unbearable if you played any game in the last 15 years. But it's probably the most beautiful competitive game ever made.
Because it's bad when the interface is the antagonist and not the other player. You shouldn't feel like you're fighting to make the units do what you want them to do. Your skill is just overcoming bad design.
I hate to do this, but Day9 (probably the only good gamer) has this covered extremely well in this video: Pathfinding and Micro in SC. I know it's rude to just link a 35 min vid, but it's well worth your time.
Long story short: Better UI/Pathfinding/Simplification doesn't equal a "better" game. Just because something feels easier, doesn't mean it's actually for the better of the game or your enjoyment.
micro is important but Starcraft just has a shitty UI that makes basic shit take 40 extra clicks.
It's not skill though. It's more like an IQ test that's is less trainable. It's practically a measure of your working memory and nothing else. True APM(not spamming commands) isn't trainable like most things that are classically considered skills is.
That's a very bold claim. What makes clicking buttons in a certain way different from other muscle memory exercises (i.e. almost every single sport)? You learn the required moves, you automate it and suddenly you free your brain to do something else. Certainly there are talents, but everyone can learn to play StarCraft if they choose to. It's not magic.
You just have to keep track of all the units in your head at the same time, keep them in the right order, and recall them all consistently with the correct timing. That is literally the definition of working memory. This is not a trainable skill. You can train yourself to be faster at turning your memory into action, but you cannot improve your memory, your timing, or your precision. Those are all things that your brain sets a hard limit on at a biological level, and it is not something that can grow once your brain is done developing as a child.
This is the main limitation of your performance in classic rts games like AOE, StarCraft, etc. It's the equivalent of having a game where you have to identify color patterns that are invisible to colorblind people and saying that fixing this removes skill from the game. It's disguising intrinsic biological factors as skill. Except in the case of the colorblindness example, it would be a lot easier to just change the color pallette of a game to fix this, and in a classic rts the game is broken at a fundamental level.
TIL RTS stands for "Real Time Skill"
This is something Starcraft does wrong, Starcraft 2 never fixed, Dawn of War (at least the first) did perfectly, yet the entire industry pretends like SC is the only game that exists.
Big ESports is dedicated to repeating the same destroy-your-mouse cave-man style gameplay and resists innovation at all costs.
This is probably why the genre is dead.
There are also games which avoid this by simply not having a base building component.
I know there are others, but Myth and Myth 2 are the ones I thought of first (of course, the trade off is you have to be much more meticulous while commanding because you only have a set number of soldiers per map)
Total War games also mechanically separate grand strategy from battlefield tactics. Too bad the fandom is full of roman bust weirdos