[Etherlord87]

Starcraft 2 murdered RTS genre, it was and is so good, that nothing comes close. I have no idea why you put it on the list.

Activision Blizzard was 2008. Shutting Blizzard North was 2005.

So indeed it seems it was rotting before official Vivaldi-Activision merger.

I think, just like with Starcraft, you misread the situation with "hype of the genre was gone" about moba. I think Blizzard was very good at creating extremely polished products, but LoL already was polished and well established.

Project Titan's assets were used in Overwatch, but yeah, spending so much time on a big project to abandon it really shows poor management skills and overall bad design of the project.

[0dayz]

The problem was the timing, Starcraft 2 mechanics wise is fine even if they made some really whimsical balance changes that plagued the esport scene until it was almost pulled off life support (similar to how Overwatch couldn't balance itself to the point where the developers gave up).

If like HotS and Diablo 3 it came out much earlier it would've kept the RTS genre most likely alive (only revived interest in AoE 2 started to get the ball rolling for RTS again).

Not only that but Blizzard had since WC3 tried to create their own MOBA and stalled time and time again, they announced Blizzard All-star while announcing SC2, only for HotS to be announce after Dota 2 had left beta & LoL was already moving away from static MOBA design to the more "skill based" design they currently got.

Especially if the rumor that icefrog (last dev of Dota) approached Blizzard and Blizzard said no, it's the most obvious act of stupidity Blizzard did.

By the time HotS was out it was dead in the water because it had no competing feature setting it apart from the competition:

* if you wanted micromanaged static MOBA: Dota 2

* If you wanted a 3rd person shooter MOBA: Smite

* If you wanted a "skill based" dynamic and more casual MOBA: LoL

HotS tried to mimic LoL which meant an already watered down MOBA being further watered down.

Hearthstone is a good example of how Blizzard's games could have looked have they timed their releases better and stopped with "fold it 3000 times", since you can only do this if the game's budget is a typical 90s game budget or you've got alternative income sources & isn't publicly owned i.e. Valve.

[properpopper]

> * if you wanted micromanaged static MOBA: Dota 2

Static? Dota 2 is not a dynamic game? Not why wdym by "micromanaged" - Meepo, Nature prophet?

> * If you wanted a 3rd person shooter MOBA: Smite

Paragon?

> HotS tried to mimic LoL

Completely different games, hots feels more like a team based game compared to Dota 2 or Lol because it has shared experience + no gold + no items - so the gap between a good and a bad player is not that visible compared to Dota2/Lol where you can abandon your team for 20-30 minutes and then destroy everyone

[0dayz]

>Static? Dota 2 is not a dynamic game? Not why wdym by "micromanaged" - Meepo, Nature prophet?

Dota 2 afaik still relies heavily on static effects such as on click effects rather than LoL where it's mostly just a matter of "skill" based abilities.

>Completely different games, hots feels more like a team based game compared to Dota 2 or Lol because it has shared experience + no gold + no items - so the gap between a good and a bad player is not that visible compared to Dota2/Lol where you can abandon your team for 20-30 minutes and then destroy everyone

HotS is a watered down version of LoL, it doesn't mean it's bad it just means it could never compete to garner the same audience when we already have "Dota 2 for big brain people, LoL for casual people".

[bluescrn]

MOBA is a strange genre. Seems to take the worst bits of of RTS and the worst of ARPG, and combine it with the worst of the gaming community and a multiplayer-only design that's very hostile to beginners.

Never got on with them or really understood the appeal, despite loving RTS and ARPGs.

[invalidOrTaken]

The goofy thing about all this is that HotS is really good if you judge it on its own merits. I played DotA for a long time, switched to HotS, and never looked back.

[properpopper]

Hots feels great because it has multiple maps, you don't have to farm/ buy items, but it can feel boring comparing to Dota2/Lol

[pdimitar]

As a casual player who was deeply invested in the Blizzard-verse me and my wife absolutely loved HOTS, regardless of timing et. al. that you mentioned.

Our problem with it ultimately became the drudgery. We wanted more game modes, some wacky whimsical arcade-like stuff. It's been a while and my memory isn't great in terms of the timeline but I think eventually they did add something like that? Can't remember but basically we gave up on the game because there was no gameplay experience diversity; stuff was more or less the same.

...and then they abandoned it... :(

HOTS is still a beautiful and well-made game though. To this day.

[BlueTemplar]

That's bullshit, the greatest thing about SC2 was its marketing (including e-sports money). Ok, also the first campaign is great and the polish is, as always, top tier.

But RTS was only in a slump in the sense that the apex of the popularity of that genre was around the turn of the millennium (which probably was unavoidable).

And only a few years before SC2 released we've got the likes of Dawn of War 1 and Supreme Commander 1, and, last but not least : the amateur-made Spring(-Recoil) games, which put almost every other RTS game to shame, so advanced they were in comparison (and, sadly, still are, when you look at today's player's first impressions of BAR, despite it mostly only having improved in the graphics and performance department, as the 'R' suggests).

Compared to Spring games, Starcraft 2 looked like a very solid and polished, but also very safe and almost obsolete game.

[Pet_Ant]

> Starcraft 2 murdered RTS genre, it was and is so good, that nothing comes close.

I mean Supreme Commander has an active community despite coming out 3 years earlier, with less hype, and from a company that has long died.

Starcraft 2 had a nice campaign, but it really felt like Starcraft 1.5. Never really elevated the genre. SupCom really did.

[Etherlord87]

Starcraft 2 came with a new, 3D engine. How can you call it Stacraft 1.5 let's be serious.

[Pet_Ant]

Sure, but the terrain wasn't truly 3D. I'm pretty sure there isn't any ballistics calculations for the attacks in Starcraft. It could have easily been a Starcraft remaster. It didn't really take the RTS genre to the next level. Doom does a lot more innovation between iterations.

Have you played Total Annihilation or Supreme Commander? Those increased the scale, the tactics, the map size. The weapons felt more varied. Really, made SC 1 & 2 feel rather Mickey Mouse.

[Etherlord87]

I don't like Supreme Commander, but I definitely agree it is the competitor of Starcraft 2. AoE don't seem this way to me, these games are so clunky. And tens if not hundreds of titles that feel like inferior reskins.

[pdimitar]

Tastes are tastes and as such are subjective and can't be contested. But Supreme Commander looks like almost a different genre to me. I like SC2's format to this day.

[concordDance]

Supcom, AoE2, Zero-K and BAR are all superior along different axes to SC2. RTS is a very wide category.