[hi_dang_]

This has been the running meme since mid 2000s. You have to see that Glest, 0AD and Spring RTS are in some ways anomalies.

A ridiculous amount of these RTS games will not make any impact to the genre, of the few which are released. I surmise that a company like Petroglyph knows that all too well by now and they have a proven track record of shipping things. Grey Goo may have been boring as hell but the work they all put into it, I’ll stomach it and play it. Great music by Frank Klepacki as always. And titles like Stormgate which I believe have ex-Blizzard people attached often have a diva like quality that entombs them. Artillery (the game that Day[9] was attached to for example) was hyped, overhyped, and then gone. And many other of this sort. I forget the name of the Myth series remake, but that made it all the way to beta before being shuttered.

It’s always a great year for RTS games, except it never is. We get the occasional release of some Company of Heroes shlock sequel, maybe a Cossacks or a Sudden Strike or whatever, but the last big RTS title was in 2010: Starcraft 2. And starcraft 2 is by communal investment dead as most of the serious players migrated back to SC1.

The little puff of wind we got from Planetary Annihilation and Ashes of the Singularity made zero dent on the genre. Very few people bothered to play these games. Most action you’ll see today is on SC1 and AoE. Remakes, demakes and remixes of the old days.

Here are the glowing reviews for Homeworld 3 which just came out: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1840080/Homeworld_3/

As a genre, RTS is dead.

[FrostKiwi]

> Remakes, demakes and remixes of the old days.

You could argue that for multiple genres! Is today's Call of Duty not just a remix of mechanics created decades prior?

Total War, Anno, etc. Highly successful series with new and coming releases with many mechanics evolved and built upon the classic RTS formula.

> As a genre, RTS is dead.

It has shrunken, I would consider it far from dead. There is a limiting factor when we consider the classic RTS formula, it's essentially PC only. Many genres work across consoles as well or were adopted to work there as well. eg. Aim assist in every console FPS. Mobile doesn't work either, touch + classic RTS doesn't mix. RTS has thus a limited audience it can appeal to. But dead it is not, Steam's player counts for Strategy --> Real Time Strategy speak for themselves.

[hi_dang_]

Shrunken and dead basically mean the same thing here, and again that term shrunken was traditionally used, along with “RTS games are too difficult” and other reasons as to the whys. There is no growth potential and at that point you’re losing players faster than you’re gaining them. It’s a dead genre by all accounts. AoE2 remastered/AoE4 will prop it up in the same way that SC2 propped it up a bit.

Unless I’m wrong it seems like steam thinks dota 2 is an RTS game, which makes any stats around these things very suspicious.

[TulliusCicero]

I mean it's definitely a niche, though we're finally seeing indie Starcraft-descended RTSes trying to expand that (there were many other attempts, but generally in other subgenres): Zerospace, Immortal, Stormgate, Battle Aces.

Unfortunately, most of the other attempts to expand the RTS playerbase were incredibly wrong-headed. Almost all of them were obsessed with simplifying the genre to appeal to more people, but in making the game easier to play they also made it less interesting, which is why it's the big traditional RTSes (SC1, SC2, AoE2, AoE4) that have the biggest playerbase, and therefore the most total casual players.

[TulliusCicero]

> This has been the running meme since mid 2000s. You have to see that Glest, 0AD and Spring RTS are in some ways anomalies.

Those aren't the games I'm talking about.

> A ridiculous amount of these RTS games will not make any impact to the genre, of the few which are released.

That's true of any genre. There are notable FPSes every year, but for every one of those, there's probably fifty random ones hardly anyone's ever heard of.

> It’s always a great year for RTS games, except it never is.

AoE4 seems to have done well for itself, it has a stable and decently high player population on Steam. But yes, most of them fail or sputter out.

> the last big RTS title was in 2010: Starcraft 2.

If your bar for 'big' is SC2 then the only big RTS title ever was SC2, since it was definitely the biggest budget and most anticipated. Most of the golden age RTSes were made in a couple years with moderate-sized teams on moderate-sized budgets. Hell, Brood War came out in the same year as Starcraft 1.

> And starcraft 2 is by communal investment dead as most of the serious players migrated back to SC1.

Not even close to true? Korea moved back to SC2 a long ass time ago, and Blizzard abandoned SC2, but it still has community support.

> Most action you’ll see today is on SC1 and AoE.

No, the biggest RTS is SC2. But after that, BW, AoE2 and AoE4 are the next biggest.