8mo ago

The RTS genre will never be mainstream unless you change it until it's 'no longer the kind of RTS that I want to play,' says Crate Entertainment CEO

www.pcgamer.com The RTS genre will never be mainstream unless you change it until it's 'no longer the kind of RTS that I want to play,' says Crate Entertainment CEO

Real-time strategy is a "nerd genre," says the developer, and he's happy to make one on those terms.

Games @sh.itjust.works

www.pcgamer.com /games/rts/crate-ceo-rts-genre-interview/

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RTS games demand so much time and patience from the player to learn. What’s the proper build order? What’s the best unit composition? How many workers should get allocated for each resource? These things aren’t always obvious. And you don’t have time to read all descriptions because the time is ticking.
Not to mention good APM and battle tactics.
Shooters are much easier to understand: aim and shoot. You don’t need to follow YouTube guides to understand that.
- Shooters are much easier to understand: aim and shoot. You don’t need to follow YouTube guides to understand that.
  They demand so much time and patience. Whats the best weapon load out, where to move to be safe from fire, how to avoid enemy snipers, trying to figure out the excessive complexity of what WSAD does.
  RTS games are much easier to understand. You drag a box around your units, and click the enemy and watch them blow up. You don't need to follow youtube guides to understand that.
  
  My point is that there’s usually an easier level of entry for other types of games. You aim and shoot, and you get instant feedback if you succeeded or not. You don’t need to understand advanced meta to get this, although it can help.
  For many RTS games it can all be dependent on how fast you expanded your economy, not on how you play your units. You can fail the entire game because of bad gameplay early.
  
  You don't meed to have any advanced meta knowledge to play most games. There are options like playing against easier ai's or similarly skilled players.
  Look at some Low Elo Legends from the game Age of Empires 2 on Youtube from T90. Most don't use advanced meta.
  Heck, I as a kid never used advanced meta and had loads of fun.
  The internet TELLS you that the latest meta is necessary and that you play suboptimally. But they're just optimizing the fun out of the game for you if you're not that kind of player.
  This mentality is even worse in competetive shooters. People playing the latest "meta" even though they don't realize they don't even have the skill to pull that meta off. I wish the "internet" would just let players have fun in their own way. And that playing games "suboptimally" can still be just as fun and rewarding an experience.
  /rant
  
  I think the key difference is that it's "easier" to apply a meta to a RTS game. In shooters, the meta often involves quick reflex decisions, where to hide, where to shoot etc. This is hard, and requires practice. It also means there is a significant number of players not applying it, or doing so sub-optimally.
  With RTS games, the metas are easier to apply. This means that, in human Vs human games, the newer players often get flattened. It also means that far more complex metas can be developed and applied.
  Shooters tend to back load the difficulty curve. It's easy to get into them, and not do badly, but hard to do well. RTS games tend to front load the difficulty. You need to get over the initial hump to get "ok" with it. Once over the hump, the curve smooths off and you get good fairly rapidly.
  One of the big differences between nerds and normals is that nerds enjoy punching through that wall. The difficulty is seen as a challenge, not an impediment. Most people want a faster feedback loop on the dopamine reward. FPS type games deliver that extremely well.
- Important addition: the majority of people isnt equipped for this kind of game. Patience and ability to grasp this kind of thing is what makes the computer nerds the computer nerds.
  Programming and sysadmin stuff isnt really popular either for that express reason.

52 comments