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If I was to guess, I think the turn based and 4x games has replaced the RTS. (Not that RTS are really gone.) The RTS hasn't been replaced by the MOBA. The MOBA may have been made in a RTS, but it has nothing to do with RTS. A few MOBA even play like FPS or TPS.
From what I gather, DOTA 2, which was being hailed as the death of LoL for awhile by many, has already started to fold under LoL's shadow. Companies putting themselves in direct competition with giants isn't in itself a bad thing, but when its all the industry does, its kind of a bad thing. How many games have tried and failed to emulate CoD only to tank? A ton of them. Sure sooner or later there will be one that topples the giant, but all the money spent on games trying to do that could arguably have been spent on other games with their own features that could have carved their own niche.
Even today, I get the sense EA only makes Battlefield because they feel obligated to compete with CoD, not because they actually want to make the game or build the brand. That's a bizare decision, especially since there's no reason to market Battlefield against CoD as they're different kinds of games.
Likewise, RTS was a smaller genre than FPS, but everyone in it spent too much time trying to directly compete with the giants (unless your title includes the words 'Total' where the dev actually tried to make something different). Especially now with people still buying Age of Empires II by the metric ton, its a wonder why so few are trying to expand the market. I don't expect it to expand, imoRTS has always been kind of niche, but I wonder why so few try.
The people in the past who convinced themselves to do unspeakable things were no less human than you or I. They made their decisions; the only thing that prevents history from repeating itself is making different ones.
-- Adam Serwer
My blog
I don't consider Moba to be a replacement of the Rts gene, in fact Moba is more a simplified version of an Rts since it lacks most of the things you would do in a rts which is controlling all of the stuff yourself from the basic gathering of resources to controlling all of your troops and heroes.
Moba dosen't do that, it just lets you focus on your various heroes and their skill and team work, Moba also focuses more on action than strategy.
For instance would you say that Lol reqiuers more management and strategic skills than a game like say Battle Realms?.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/02/10 21:16:40
From each according to his ability, to each according to his need
Not for me. Strategy games- both real time and turn based- are my favorite genre of video games, with Company of Heroes II holding the crown right now for current timesink of choice. I don't like MOBAs or Tower Defense or any of that stuff. Which is interesting, because I have no problem with party-level RPGs or action-RPGs, like Baldurs Gate, NWN2, Dragon Age, etc. I think it ultimately stems from the fact that I tend to think that MOBAs lack the depth of either true RTS games, or true RPGs.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/02/10 22:16:06
Total war, Total Annihilation, Supreme commander, Star trek armada 3, Sins of a solar empire, star trek fleet operations, Dawn of war firestorm over kurava etc these are all amazing games and RTS
Formosa wrote: Total war, Total Annihilation, Supreme commander, Star trek armada 3, Sins of a solar empire, star trek fleet operations, Dawn of war firestorm over kurava etc these are all amazing games and RTS
Wouldnt say RTS is dead, But as you can see Blizzard is trying to hop on th MOBA wave. I think Starcarft will do just fine and maybe well get a warcraft 4, But im highly sceptical
I wish! Armada 2 was a bit of a letdown in my opinion tried to do to much. Campaign was fun though.
To be fair, it's better for a game to try to do too much and fail, than to fail because they didn't do enough. At least you can say "that game had potential, just needs a bit of work" with the former, and the devs can hopefully try again.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2014/02/11 15:45:01
The people in the past who convinced themselves to do unspeakable things were no less human than you or I. They made their decisions; the only thing that prevents history from repeating itself is making different ones.
-- Adam Serwer
My blog
I wish! Armada 2 was a bit of a letdown in my opinion tried to do to much. Campaign was fun though.
To be fair, it's better for a game to try to do too much and fail, than to fail because they didn't do enough. At least you can say "that game had potential, just needs a bit of work" with the former, and the devs can hopefully try again.
All true. I may be being a bit harsh on armada 2 but I just could not approve of the way they did 3d combat (though to be honest there is only 1 game that I think pulled off 3d combat in a good way and that was Homeworld) and warp speed just negated base defense. Warp in target fire warp out all base defense gone. The added ships were great, planets were a great improvement, and added races are awesome but I just feel that things were a bit lackluster.
Now the fleet operations mod for armada 2 I think that was gold.
Forest hunter sept ~3500 guardians of the covenant 4th company ~ 6000
Warrior based hive fleet
Guitarquero wrote: Wouldnt say RTS is dead, But as you can see Blizzard is trying to hop on th MOBA wave. I think Starcarft will do just fine and maybe well get a warcraft 4, But im highly sceptical
Actually Warcraft 4 was killed because of the MMO, not the moba.
Though their moba kinda looks like odd fun.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/02/11 15:58:56
Looks intriguing. I already have the sacrifice of angels mod for sins and that does a wonderful job giving me a star trek fix. But I might have to look more into this. Thank you good sir
Forest hunter sept ~3500 guardians of the covenant 4th company ~ 6000
Warrior based hive fleet
Problem with RTSs is that they haven't evolved to highlight team play.
The primary strength of MOBAs is that you are on a team. There's a reason why the most popular sports are team based games. There's just something about being part of a team that makes things more intense and fun.
Traditional RTSs highlight the 1v1 too much, along with piling on ridiculous amounts of management into that 1v1. You have a single player handling the kind of work meant for 5 people. There's far less people in the world that can handle that gameplay than there are people who can handle a single MOBA character. And most of the extra stuff you're tasked to do in an RTS is banal base building, essentially jumping through hoops just to create more hoops, just to bring out the units that you need to fight.
MOBAs put you right in the fight from the very start, and you build up in the game by fighting, rather than constantly flipping back to your base.
Now, RTS games do have team modes, but they're basically just the 1v1 modes with extra players, which causes a ridiculous amount of escalation that, can make the game crazy and wild, but also throws balance out the window.
If RTS games in the future could make the team game modes limited in scope, but increase the teamplay, they could definitely compete with MOBAs.
Sorry for the bump but I felt like I had to add my piece.
The big three of the genre; Age of Empires/Mythology, C&C, and Starcraft/Warcraft have had a rough while recently,
Age of Empires was pretty much dead for a while before the HD re-release of 2 gave it a kick in the pants and brought it back.
Warcraft is unlikely to come back to the RTS genre and Starcraft has become mostly about the competitive micromanaging ubermensch multiplayer scene with deliberate attempts to keep the skill ceiling high which I find rather blah and it's userbase is in decline.
C&C is probably my favorite RTS series (if not one of my favorite franchises period) but the heinous abomination that is C&C 4 seems to have more or less killed the series when it should have been strangled in the crib the moment they uttered the words "throw away all the core C&C game mechanics" and Generals 2 is on hiatus.
For the rest of the genre:
Rise of Nations/Legends is gone because it's parent company kicked the bucket.
Paradox will continue to be paradox and honestly, as a grand-strategy game I feel it's a bit out of place here.
Total War is a hybrid TBS/Real time tactics game, it's great fun but it's not really an RTS.
Company of Heroes 2 was a disappointment (and so greatly whitewashed Nazi Germany while demonizing the Soviet Union that it managed to tank all over the former Soviet Union)
Dawn of War's fate is nebulous.
Empire Earth died when it released the horrifically terrible third game.
R.U.S.E seems to have just popped in and out without leaving an impact.
Universe At War got a buggy release, super low unit variety, a god awful user interface, and effectively died out even though it had the potential to be really great.
Empire at war was also good but Petroglyph doesn't seem to want to go back to it...or RTS games at all since all of Petroglyph's recent releases are MOBAs.
I strangle an imaginary kitten anytime someone calls X-COM or Civ or other turn based games "Real time strategy"
Men of War is great if very micro-prone, and as it has no unit replacement or base building, it slots into Real Time Tactics.
World in Conflict was another good Real Time Tactics game, but Massive bit the dust and you're unlikely to ever see a sequel.
WarGames is again, a deck based real time tactics game. The multiplayer is good but the single player campaign is all kinds of bad.
Dune doesn't really seem to have survived Westwood's demise.
End War was interesting and certainly fun enough, but it is still essentially a Real Time Tactics game. Since Tom Clancy is dead and the campaign leaves no real room for a sequel (all endings lead to your chosen faction ruling the world forever) I don't think you'll see a sequel any day soon.
Total Annihilation lives on in various indie springRTS engine games, and in a few spiritual successors such as SupCom and Planetary Annihilation. Rock on little buddy.
Sins of a Solar Empire was excellent and had amazing scale and an excellent hybrid of 4x and traditional RTS elements. But given that IronClad itself believes that the RTS genre is finished and MOBAs are the future I wouldn't hold your breath regarding sequels.
Homeworld seems due for a return. Unfortunately this return is under the same company that made Aliens: Colonial Marines so I'm going to be very cautious even if they got a lot of the old developers on the case.
Achron had an excellent, very interesting concept, but unfortunately it's pitiful budget (not one voice actor knows how to act, not, a, single, one, they can't even afford animation for cutscenes and most things look extremely silly) and confusing interface made it undersell it's potential.
Axis and Allies the RTS game is a fething abomination.
Never played Blitzkrieg unfortunately.
Stalin vs the Martians is like Axis and Allies, only more so. In that it's terrible. It is at least, self aware of being terrible.
BFME is unlikely to get a sequel due to EA no longer having the license, rather sadly. It was a legitimately great series.
Halo Wars decided to be dumb and be a console exclusive (come on Halo Wars, the PC community could have done so much more for you) and despite being good, didn't live up to what it could have been. Oh and Ensemble Studios is six feet under so that kind of puts a crimp on any sequel.
Supreme Commander had something great going on, then it released it's awful sequel and promptly killed itself.
Planetary Annihilation looks like it's going to be godly.
0 A.D is also something worth checking out.
Now for the state of the genre.
Well, the Tower Defence and MOBA genres have officially split entirely from the RTS genre after spending years as custom maps or mods for proper RTS games like Warcraft 3. This took a not insignificant amount of the playerbase with them.
Secondly, as I mentioned before, a lot of the big movers and shakers of the genre either have no idea what they're doing or are no longer with us/flat out gave up on the genre.
Thirdly, the re-emergence of the real time tactics genre further siphoned away players as the people who only wanted to kill things and focus on micromanagement rather than base building and macromanagement jumped ship.
Now with Blizzard no longer having any real competition it can afford to do whatever the hell it wants and stifle competition. C&C is down and out for the time being and Age of X is only making a tepid recovery. But Starcraft wants to be an E-sports game so badly that it's forced itself into competition with LoL and DOTA, and because it's balanced around very high APM micromanagement focused 1vs1 rush game play it doesn't appeal to people who want either more strategic depth/a slower pace while still not interesting the people who really only want to kill things without ever touching base building.
So the traditional RTS genre has either tried to innovate from starcraft, where it promptly withers and dies because it's not starcraft and they generally don't have the money to advertise the game, or it tries to be starcraft, and withers and dies as people just play starcraft instead.
But I have hope that one day, C&C will return. And once again, GDI, Nod, the Allies, the Soviets, Yuri, the USA, the Chinese, the GLA, the Scrin, the Empire of the Rising Sun, and the E.U (and maybe some new factions) can all get back together and blow each other the feth up.
Yes
Hell yes.
Hell fething yes.
Midnightdeathblade wrote: Think of a daemon incursion like a fart you don't quite trust... you could either toot a little puff of air, bellow a great effluvium, or utterly sh*t your pants and cry as it floods down your leg.
We tend to forget that Starcraft and Warcraft extended their lifespans and popularity considerably because of the world editor function. Entire new genres of games, MOBA's included, were created because the creativity of the players themselves.
Without going into the strengths and weaknesses of each RTS, I think that the reason why people believe that the genre is fading, is because innovation under the constraints of business interests is much more difficult to do than building a game for fun. We have to remember that in Starcraft and Warcraft 3, THOUSANDS of different game types were made available because millions of people were effectively developing games, play testing them, and making a non-profit market that was shaped not by the desire of money, but rather to design a game that was the most fun. A games success was not about how much money it could make for the developers, but rather how many people desired to play it.
This is basically the level of creativity that I'm trying to suggest. Imagine if you even can, EA abandoning its money grubbing attitude and creates a professional think tank where it basically hires 1,000 indie developers and says to them, "here's the Command and Conquer's Source Code and world editor, make us a bunch of games we'll let the public play for free and see which becomes the most popular - then, when we know what's the most popular, we'll rehire all of you to make the most kickass RTS ever made that's F2P with ascetic micro transactions."
That's basically how LoL, DOTA2, and the other MOBA's were designed, and why it's no wonder why they're so popular.
But.. that said, if EA actually committed to such a risk, the level of innovation in the RTS genre would be unparalleled from the project. It may even revolutionize how games are developed..... as we are seeing with EC
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/03/05 19:25:51
2014/03/05 23:09:10
Subject: Re:Have 'MOBAs' largely replaced the RTS?
Empire at war was also good but Petroglyph doesn't seem to want to go back to it...or RTS games at all since all of Petroglyph's recent releases are MOBAs.
Remember the expansion, and how horrible the balance was? The new faction being leagues better, all the new stuff for The Empire while shafting the Rebellion on new things?
cincydooley wrote: Man, I would love a MOBA game based on Dawn of War.....
How awesome would THAT be?
That would be pretty cool, just have teams of heroes (do either an order/destruction thing or just have anyone fighting together) for a cookie cutter MOBA, but with 40k heroes and abilities (obviously the abilities need to be redone).
Empire at war was also good but Petroglyph doesn't seem to want to go back to it...or RTS games at all since all of Petroglyph's recent releases are MOBAs.
Remember the expansion, and how horrible the balance was? The new faction being leagues better, all the new stuff for The Empire while shafting the Rebellion on new things?
Well Westwood has a history of meta-disrupting expansion packs stretching all the way back to Red Alert 1 consistently shafting the Allies in favor of giving the Soviets all the cool stuff. I wasn't particularly surprised when Empire at War's expansion pack continued a trend set down since RA1 Aftermath and continued in Yuri's revenge.
Universe at war though, is a great symbol of Petroglyph's habit of wasted potential. Universe at war had the concepts and core gameplay to be a great game but they released the game half-finished because Sega wanted a 2006 release out of them. What could have been a new Command and Conquer is instead an obscure, barely polished RTS.
*Sigh*
Of course Westwood also had problems tying their games together into an overall metaplot and if Petroglyph ever repeated their success with Command and Conquer I'd expect the same issues to start popping up.
Despite what westwood says, Red Alert doesn't really make much (re; any) sense as a prequel to Tiberium.
The political map of the world in C&C 1 is in no way suggestive of the second world war being fought against the communist block, and Red Alert 1 told us that a world war fought in Stalin's lifetime was using Abrams tanks, double barelled T-80s, Foxbat Migs, Apache longbows, Directed Energy Weapons, and teleportation devices, while Tiberian Dawn tells us that a conflict fought at the end of the 20th century was still largely using the same tech as seen in the 1950s/40s. Only replace the lightning guns with frickin' laser beams.
Midnightdeathblade wrote: Think of a daemon incursion like a fart you don't quite trust... you could either toot a little puff of air, bellow a great effluvium, or utterly sh*t your pants and cry as it floods down your leg.
2014/03/18 08:37:09
Subject: Re:Have 'MOBAs' largely replaced the RTS?
Forest hunter sept ~3500 
guardians of the covenant 4th company ~ 6000
Warrior based hive fleet
Iron Warriors 
