For many veteran gamers, RTS games are a word they'll never forget. Whether it is Red Alert or StarCraft, return to the Empire, etc., these are the youth memories of many players.
RTS, also known as Real-Time Strategy Game, is a type of strategy game. The game is played instantaneously, not in a turn-based format commonly found in strategy games. Players often play the role of leader in the game, and carry out business development and dispatch troops to this subtle operation.
At the beginning of the online game, RTS games can be described as unlimited scenery, when there were internet cafes saying that some people were playing RTS games such as Red Alert and Interstellar. But now, those games have long since disappeared, and even RTS games have become a niche, what is the reason for this? There are three main reasons.
The first and most important reason is that the gameplay of RTS is so complicated that I don't think anyone should question the difficulty of RTS games. As we all know, a game is not necessarily popular if the gameplay is simple, but most of the hot games are not difficult, and the more popular the game, the more so.
One of the most popular leagues of legends is a very clear example, the source of league of legends comes from Blizzard in order to simplify the RTS game, the role-playing real-time strategy game Warcraft 3.
However, there are still many players who feel that the game is too complicated, and the control of heroes and creeps is overwhelming. So the hero-only DOTA game came into being on the basis of Warcraft 3.
However, the positive and negative supplements in DOTA, circumnavigating the woods, etc. are still difficult, and the final version of League of Legends has turned out to be the hottest MOBA game in the world.
From this, we can see how important it is for a game to be simplified and popularized, but many RTS games do not reflect this.
For RTS games we want to learn, we need to have a lineup, classes, buildings, maps, resources... Wait a whole bunch of knowledge to remember. Rote memorization is not enough, we still need tens or even hundreds of hours of learning to understand the most basic gameplay.
In addition, the game is not only complex to play, but also often requires players to perform multi-line operations. For example, in the early stage, players need to send troops to scout, mine resources, build buildings, produce classes, etc., and later when fighting with other players, we also need to consider class selection, war strategy, resource operation and even the control of classes...
These operations sound like they make people's scalps tingle, and the actual operation makes the player call out anti-human. Among them, the wayfinding AI of Interstellar 1 and Red Alert 2 is the most criticized, not only often detoured, but also killed by people many times inexplicably. The most important thing is that the game is a timely strategy, and these multi-line operations test the player's hand speed and reflexes. Chances are you're still struggling with decisions, and the enemy has already reached the doorstep.
As a result, today's strategy games are either turn-based like the Civilization series, and players can stop the game at any time to think and relax their brains. Or use a free sandbox game to slow down the pace of the game a lot and reduce the pressure on the player.
The second reason is the marketing problem of RTS games, due to the demonstration of the industry leader Blizzard, they have begun to over-market e-sports, but have given up their most important game features. In fact, no matter how many playable parts of an RTS game, players will be familiar with it as long as they stick to it.
The game focuses on different players using their own wisdom to choose different methods to win, the most important playable point is the player's initiative rather than the game itself, which is the reason why an RTS game can continue to be full of vitality.
For example, many strategy games have begun to operate on the culture of the game itself, such as promoting the most authentic ancient battlefields that allow players to experience, hardcore history in the game, and player-friendly game atmosphere.
However, due to the excessive marketing of e-sports, many RTS games look the same, their own game features are difficult to reflect, and the attractiveness of the game is not as good as before.
But the focus of real-time strategy games is all on the game, there are very few players involved in a game, the interaction is only the combat part, and the game culture is almost all supported by the background story. Most of the Red Alert and interstellar people who were on fire at that time were like this, and there were very few operations on their own in-game culture.
The third is that with the development of the times, there are more and more games today, and the room for players to choose is also larger. When the Red Alert and interstellar fire were first, was it really everyone who was obsessed with RTS games? I think not necessarily, otherwise how could there have been success in RPG games such as Paladin Legend and Sword Man Romance.
Today, compared with other games, it can be seen from the fact that RTS games are already in a cold position, and RTS games are actually only liked by a small number of players. Players have more options, and naturally they put down hardcore RTS games.
Not every game can still be alive and the classics will last forever. As mentioned earlier, RTS games can catch fire in addition to the continuous good works, and the era factors of that year also accounted for a large part. But today's noisy society is fast-paced, and all kinds of games are popular, how many people can calm down and play and patiently enjoy each game?
RTS games are not bad, it's just that we don't need them anymore.