Are strategy games dead

But in MP it's all just real time battles, they are actually relatively snappy short affairs too. It's been a very successful couple of games for Creative Assembly and they capitalized on that for sure, with plenty of quite consistent streamers helping out the scene too. In today's climate where even decent MP shooters playerbases can just die out in the first week of release that's saying something.

So no it's nowhere near dead, it's just a niche market now. The games are there if you look for them. I'll agree what's being said that its a niche genre right now, though I miss the "Golden Age" of the early to mid s where you would go to a Target and the computer game aisle would just be full of RTSs, now granted most were meh, but there was still some excitement in trying them out.

I was always bummed out I could never run Paraworld for any of my computers. In the last few years we've gotten a number of indie RTS games, only a few of them go for the kind of RTS I prefer Tooth and Tail for example isn't at all capitalizing on what I enjoy in the genre , but they're out there, but generally don't get any coverage at all by the press for some reason I mean, I could accept it if most journalists aren't into the genre, but most of them seem to say they loved those games and wish there were more of them or lament the death of the genre, but then go on ignoring the ones that get made.

I really enjoyed my time with SunAge , Nightside , last year's 8-Bit Armies not the other games in the series as much though and this year's Rusted Warfare. I also liked most aspects of Wyrmsun a WarCraft 2 inspired weird grand strategy RTS thing , the Meridian New World and Squad 22 series and Etherium though it got broken with some patch a few months after launch and never fixed.

No, genres don't die. They change and there popularity ebbs and flows but they don't die. RTS goes through the same cycle every other "dead" genre has. It's the biggest thing in the world and then it's not. Some indie developers make some good ones and maybe it comes back in a big way for a period of time then it goes away again.

No genre of video games has truly ever died, therefore, it's kind of silly to say any genre is "dying" just because it's been a while since they lit the world on fire. Kinda proves your point because I've never heard of or seen most of the stuff you mentioned.

SunAge definitely has the visual style I like. Amazing artwork. Maybe the world or theme isn't particularly grabbing me though. I would absolutely love a cool looking table-top type thing. Like a MechCommander. I wanna get down in there and watch a tiny Mad Cat stomp through some trees and launch some missiles over my head. I mean, it may look like one, and they may play similarly, but they're not the same thing.

It's like calling Gears of War a first person shooter, or Dark Souls a beat-em-up. Not at all. There are still a fair number of high profile RTS games that come out every year and there are new takes on the genre. Clash Royal is maybe the most popular mobile RTS game, and despite it's shitty chest system, is a pretty good game.

I'm one of those people that went from Starcraft to Warcraft to Starcraft 2 to Dota. In a sense; it's like Call of Duty, we are getting a new FPS every year, but at somepoint, one came that you'll stick by and then not bother with the rest. You mean like that new Warhammer game?

Planetary Annihilation? I don't think there's a lack of them but rather that none of them are that interesting or good. When was the last time you got excited for a new RTS game? I don't think it's experimentation that's missing but rather innovation and a being bold enough to make something different. I think Grey Goo failed because it lacked personality and simplicity, the resource system is bad and the building system is clunky.

Planetary Annihilation is bad because it fails to do anything interesting with it's scale. I think the RTS genre has been perfected ages ago, really what most of all these old games need, is better performance on new systems and better AI. If you think of Team Fortress 2, a game that has survived for over a decade now, solely because of developer support, that makes me think if other games had that support still, would any of them have died?

Age of Empires 2 is getting that support now, again. It's been resurrected. Halo Wars 2 is bad, 1 is on PC -finally- though. I'm use Warhammer fans like that game but all i'm hearing from the Total War fans is that the series went downhill several games ago. It's also interesting to point out that all these are sequels and not original IPs.

I think the Warhammer game will do fine with people that like Warhammer but for all the other games, i think the core audience are going to stick with their old games. I feel like it's a nice little thing but i don't think i'll ever want to sit down for hours upon hours playing a RTS like that, i do prefer a more Top-down view that a regular screen gives and then not needing the headset on is pretty big too. I'm actually still shocked, when people bring up journalists as high standing authorities on video games instead of just making the argument for the game yourself.

Dunno if you understand what i'm trying to say. I have been wanting to play Tooth and Tail but i'm not sure how my i desire to, i do have a big backlog afterall. It captures the same kinda frantic RTS multiplayer gameplay you find in something like Starcraft, but instead of focusing the main game system on combat it's focused on resource management and stock manipulation.

It's sorta hard to explain how it all works, but playing the game multiplayer I had a bunch of the same kinda "aha" moments I had back when I first started playing Starcraft online. I find myself here on GB more for the personality of the staff than because I want to make a buying decision.

Yep, was killed by the WC3 Custom Map DOTA, which also killed the mapmaking scene; mapmaking would have eventually died to Indie games since there's no reason to develop a fully fleshed out game of which there were around 10, unique ones in Starcraft: Brood War UMS and not make money off it anymore. Purpose built for it.

I should also specify that I don't play RTS multiplayer stuff. I don't know or care about actions per minute or whatever. I want to go slow, turtle, build a pretty base and look at cool units blowing stuff up. There have been some games with this VR perspective like AirMech, but they're all big, chunky, and simple.

I want realistic looking terrain, effects, detailed units and such. Granted, VR has trouble doing details, but if it looks decent from afar and you can still stick your head way in there and see all the cool details, that might be good enough for me for now. None of the strategy is real time. It has none of the genre stables. The battles are in real time, but even then, those battles don't really resemble the gameplay of RTS-games. At best that would be real time tactics.

I mean, that's basically the Total War franchise that you described. The campaign map has turn based gameplay but the battles are where the real time strategy components come from. It definitely seems like the RTS genre as a whole has hit an all time low when it comes to notable releases.

However, I wouldn't call it dead since we're still getting RTS game releases. Not to mention Dawn of War 3 and Starcraft Remastered came out this year. Ive got my eye on Sudden Strike 4 on Steam. Little steep for something I'm not sure I want to play. There's also Blitzkrieg 3 which apparently came out of early access this year?

Reviews make me unsure, and I've downloaded the demo but haven't tried it. Again, curious about this. Wargame stuff seems really cool but also very complicated. So many units with tiny variations. I did pick up the original Total War: Warhammer at release, but only played it a little.

I think I laid siege to some Dwarf fortress, took that over, and that was enough for me. The Total War games are a mix of turn based and real time strategy. The thing about RTS games is that they can be really fun for someone with a casual interest in a single player setting.

But the skill ceiling in multiplayer is so damn high that it may keep people from even bothering to try it. Hearing about Korean Starcraft players putting in 10 hours of practice a day could keep you from even trying the game and seeing how fun beating up a computer can be. Instead of proving that an RTS was still viable, it proved there wasn't room for more. Thanks to esports and expansions, it's continued to draw in players, but nothing else has been able to follow in its footsteps.

StarCraft 2's success was indicative of an industry more interested in live service games. But where did that leave people who just wanted comp stomps and fun campaigns? StarCraft 2 still had both, but publishers had decided that those things didn't shift games. Twitch, microtransactions, a constant stream of updates—that was the new normal. Players like myself were left out in the cold. It's easy to blame publishers for everything, but some of the blame also lies with the games themselves, which weren't able to adapt or find a new hook to draw players back in.

There were valiant attempts, of course, and even a few victories. Stalwart Relic continued to make Warhammer 40K adaptations and more Company of Heroes, while Eugen Systems blended wargaming and real-time battles to create the exceptional Wargame and Steel Division series.

They were rarities to be treasured. One thing these games have in common is doing away with a lot of the base building and resource gathering that had typified RTS games for decades. Company of Heroes still let you construct some buildings, but you didn't have to spend nearly as much time fiddling with them.

Resources, meanwhile, were gathered by capturing and holding objectives, encouraging a lot more conflict. Wargame and Steel Division, meanwhile, threw out buildings and resource gathering entirely, putting all the focus on the battles themselves.

Those things didn't guarantee quality, though. It wasn't great. There's no one single solution. What about indie developers? When trends need to be bucked, that's who we usually turn to. Unfortunately, we're still waiting. The landscape hasn't been entirely desolate, mind. We've had They Are Billions, which pits your vulnerable city against unrelenting hordes of zombies, and Northgard, a viking Age of Empires-style romp, and more hybrids like Bad North and AI Wars 2, but it's hardly been a resurgence.

The genre needs a spark, but lately we've just been blowing on dying embers. But the Genre hasn't died completely Relic have been holding the torch for some time with the earlier Dawn of war games and the Company of Heroes series. As mentioned Blizzard continued to develop titles over the last few years but the popular Warcraft series is now an MMO and the future is uncertain for Starcraft after the latest expansion is released.

In recent news we have OpenRA which seems like one of the most interesting attempts to bring back every relevant Westwood game while re-balancing them and even adding new units.