Recently, I played a few old RTS games (Tiberian Dawn, Tiberian Sun) and a few more recent ones (Red Alert 3, Grey Goo) and I was struck by how differently paced they are.
In the old games, everything happens slowly. You accumulate resources slowly. You build units slowly. Your units trundle across the map slowly. In Tiberian Dawn, for example, building even a single medium tank is a significant investment of time and money. Building a second tiberium refinery can effectively double your income, but it also means making yourself vulnerable for a long time if your opponent decides to put that initial investment into a rush instead. Everything happens slowly enough that you have time to act deliberately, and every action feels worth deliberating.
New RTS games, by contrast, feel like anxiety simulators to me. You rack up resources quickly. You churn through your build queues quickly. Units charge across the map. There's never enough time to do all the things I need to do. Oops, I tried to use proper combined arms tactics to assault an enemy base, but that stole my attention away from my build queue, causing me to ram my resource cap and now I'm pissing away credits. Oops, I tried to get my build queue in order and in the process my unit blob was left vulnerable and now the enemy's flanked me and destroyed my artillery. Oops, I tried to set up base defenses and while I was doing that my enemy beat me to that highly contested resource field by a few seconds.
When I lose in an old RTS, I feel like it's because I wasn't clever enough. When I lose in a new RTS, I feel like it's because I wasn't fast enough.
Y'all don't get me started on the blight that is the "only thing that matters is how fast you beat game" modern mindset. I don't think my brain can keep staving off the aneurysms provoked by the rant I have on this subject.
The tweet that inspired this is doubly funny if you know anything about speedrunning, since getting a good time requires thoroughly understanding the game in question and practicing to the point that you can reliably execute difficult techniques. Brings to mind my many, many attempts needed to learn how to stutter step and mockball in Super Metroid.
Super Metroid is a very good example. Once you become good enough at the game, it basically becomes open world lmao.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
MOBAs were a plague that killed off just about the entire RTS genre that birthed them, but even before that, yeah, esports bullshit like "clicks per minute" fixations removed a lot of the strategy possibilities in RTS games in favor of "click really fast and outproduce the enemy to win."
RTS games with unit limits helped a bit with that.
Back then I wanted to like it but the "pro" scene drained the joy out of me. It was unavoidable because even casual battle.net play had that attitude creeping in.
Spent a short time trying to battle.net the custom maps (which many were absolutely amazing looking) but no rando's would ever want to play them.
Yeah, I could never handle online play in Starcraft, I'm just saying this is not a new phenomenon. I played the hell out of the campaign though.
That's part of why I hated what Starcraft 2 eventually did to Kerrigan: the character from the first game (while already questionable and likely some sort of "dare ye enter my magical realm" writer spankbank material, villain origin story and all). I did enjoy the campaign at the time and got into the music and the vibes (and ignored the "Confederacy" and other really sus shit until later) and even the story until the sequel shat the bed with "corruption" cliches sort of overwriting every previous character motive.
Same shit ruined World of Warcraft for me with Wish Dot Com Cthulu.
I loved those late 90s cg cutscenes and was a small child so all the "confederacy" shit flew right over my head at the time.
'at's a zergling, Lester, smaller type of zerg. Needn't be out this far unless... Aw shit.
Hey, to be fair the space Confederacy gets fucked on and owned by every other faction including the protagonist Terrans.
I actually kinda fw the "deep south in space" aesthetic, and the portrayal of the Confederates as deeply incompetent morally bankrupt assholes makes it a bit more palatable imo.
Yeah, it does, I do remember that.
The manual art did seem to glorify them a bit with cool space motorcycle poses and so on, though.
Back in the "good ol' days" when RTS's weren't expected to be competitive spectator sports.
Every modern RTS wants to be the new starcraft which includes the fast pace gameplay, they dont want the slow dark age gameplay that may bore spectators
I think the trend predates esports, so it's probably overreliance on community feedback. I imagine people motivated to post were more likely to be obsessed over their click rate or whatever, and that became a metric to evaluate gameplay for companies developing RTSes.
It'd make sense if Starcraft is patient zero, this video encapsulates everything I dislike about RTS and in my mind is antithetical to what a strategy game should be.
I haven't played StarCraft 1, but I did play 2, and as I understand it a big source of the problem is that somehow the fastest game speed became considered "default" (explicitly so in 2). StarCraft 2 also intentionally added tons of annoying micro solely for the sake of annoying micro.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
i used to love RTS as well but have the same complaints. can't do tactics it just feels like the games are designed for twitchy fast paced multiplayer e-sports.
WARNO (latest in the Cold war era Wargame series) seems pretty slow paced. it even has a way to give commands while paused in single player (or virtually paused, i think it's at like 1/100 speed) also unlike the others it seems to be designed around single player
no resource gathering though i think you just secure objectives to gain more points to spend for units. plus side you can use cool Soviet tanks and troops
WARNO is great, it has a big learning curve you have to climb to be able to play it competently though. I also really loved their previous game that focused on the Eastern Front of WW2 too, and that has a far more complete single-player experience.
I play tons of the old Starcraft, X-Com Apocalypse, Jagged Alliance 1.13, Alpha Centauri Alien Crossfire, Faster Than Light, Company of Heroes 1, etc. Maybe Transport Tycoon Deluxe could be sort-of decribed as a RTS also?
Older games from the 90s-early 2000s have this certain enjoyment factor that many (but not all) newer games lack. Being able to also cheat in an old game is amazing, like absolutely dicking down an enemy with a squad of 12 Terran Battlecruisers. Or modifying weapons like the early-game laser cannons in X-Com: Apocalypse to fire extremely fast and at longer ranges, to then subsequently level 90% of the city in a constant maelstrom of piss because a UFO spawned in. Oh and also there's so much piss onscreen that a modern gaming PC with a Ryzen 7 starts to dry-heave on a game released when Nelson Mandela was still president.
Death to AmeriKKKa
sure, but I think I'm not into the fast paced games because I'm getting old, but I also don't like the trend in general. I think there's an untapped market for good turn based strategy games, which I'm currently working on a crappy indie game to address.
Hell yeah, always good to meet another indie dev who's trying to help revive dead genres.
think there's an untapped market for good turn based strategy games
BG3 proved this. Turn-based strategic combat is not a dealbreaker.
I only like RTS games where you can pause and issue orders for this reason. Like Kenshi puts you in brutal situations all the time, but it rarely feels unfair (or at least unfair in a way that's different from what you expect) because you basically play as a hivemind where at any point you can stop time and do everybody's thinking for them.
And if I'm playing something larger scale it's even more important, because you're telling me that I, the person commanding all this, wouldn't be constantly delegating and being briefed on shit? I have to check up on all the resources, keep track of all the units and equipment, build all the buildings, and personally schedule every troop movement from paratrooper assaults to scouting parties? Fuck you, give me time powers! I understand it's boring to realistically say "destroy this point" and then have a bunch of your underlings make a plan and carry it out with their underlings, but in their effort to avoid that boring layer of disengagement, they've added the anxiety of having to do the work of a general and their lieutenants. I just think the way most RTS games simulate total control without a chain of command sets them up for this pitfall.
Also I just want my little infantry squads to mean something, you know?
There's no combat (it's more of a resource manager), but you would probably like "against the storm".
Great game. Less of an RTS though, more of a city builder/colony management game. I'd put it in the category of Timberborn, Rimworld, Dwarf Fortress, etc. although it does have shorter, more challenging games.
I also like how it's pretty unique in the genre for not being a thinly veiled colonization simulator, as canonically in universe a massive storm wipes out every structure and living thing every cycle that isn't inside the main tower. So you actually are starting from scratch with no people there, not "nobody lives here do not mind the raids by the savages" you get out of Dwarf Fortress, Rimworld, etc.
RA3 is slower than RA2, which is one thing that people complained about with regards to the former.
RA3 was specifically designed to make the game slower, with fewer resources in order to promote more thoughtful military compositions and strategy.If anything, I find the 90s RTS games, played at high speed (which is seemingly the standard for them) seem to be much 'faster' than the more modern ones.
I played Tiberian Dawn/Tiberian Sun at medium speed because maxing out the speed felt like activating Yakety Sax mode, lol
Well, that's kind of your answer why the old games feel slower to you.
It seems that the standard is setting these games to high speed. I don't think there is an argument to be made that newer RTS games are faster than that.
Who decides what "the standard" is and why should I care? Speeding up the older games is an option I don't have to use and one that is not set by default. I don't get the option to slow down the newer games.
This is probably why my favourite rts's are also the slowest, supreme commander and Homeworld 1
supreme commander and Homeworld 1
Good times, good times.
What the fuck happened to the story/setting of Homeworld 3?
Made me sad. It was one of the few examples of fiction where the main protagonist was a collective, not an individual, without losing emotion. And they gave it up for a mother-daughter plotline.
MandaloreGaming did a pretty funny takedown of the plot and how it ignores or just outright retcons the previous games without going the chud route (but don't read the comments). He says "no, I will not feel sympathy for Security Blanket Adolf Hitler after she murdered billions because she was lonely."
https://youtu.be/nuC2I8s6qf8?t=1624
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Me playing Total Warhammer battles at 0.5x speed so I have anything even approaching a chance to do the necessary micro for using chariots (I still can't)
Total Warhammer is hard for me because my favorite part is zooming in and watching the action up close, especially lizardmen, but in order to actually be good at the battles you need to be zoomed out to see everything going on.
me when i zoom in the doomwheel running over the basic swordmen
me when i realise there is a reiksguard killing my weapon teams:
Yeah, the only way I'm really able to appreciate the details is as a little treat for successfully making a doomstack that runs itself, which just isn't possible (or interesting) with some factions.
I got into saving replays of my coolest fights and then rewatching them after but it's not quite the same...Honestly some sort of dual-screen thing where I could like pin an action camera somewhere while also having the zoomed out view to issue orders would be dope.
I'm a huge RTS enjoyer but never could get too into the faster modern RTS games so let me recommend Dune: Spice Wars or Northgard, both are made by the same devs and go for a very relaxed and tactical pace, there are still moments where you might have to react to something happening fast, especially in Dune (sand worm might be about to eat your army, if you aren't paying attention they will all die within like 10 seconds) but they are both pretty fun. Sins of a Solar Empire also has a pretty deliberate pace, I haven't tried the new one yet though.
Peak RTS for me is either the original Homeworld or Rome: Total War, both for different reasons.
In Homeworld you tend to build up your forces while lumbering through the map from objective to objective, launching little raids with your strike craft against your opponent's resource while scouting their unit comp so that you can add the appropriate counters to your fleet, and then the match ends in a glorious orgy of violence where you get to see who did it better.
Rome tends to start with the orgy of violence, where your best units square off with your opponent's and then depending on your initial deployment you will probably win in one area and lose in another, making the mid- and late-game about reacting appropriately to changing conditions.
And both games got worse in their sequels by adding a bunch of special abilities and other unnecessary fluff. No, I don't want whether I win or lose to be determined by whether or not I pressed the "increase damage" button at the optimal time, I want it to be because my bombers went uncountered and cleaned house against the enemy battleships!
