I remember back 15-20 years ago people used to play fewer games. Games might have been cheaper on release but the price would not drop as quickly as nowadays. No steam sales etc. We would buy 3-4 games a year max and focus on those. I remember even with a short linear game like Max Payne, i finished it over a dozen times and played various mods.
Now that prices have dropped people play more games with little time for each game. People habe developed the "backlog" mentality, having bought dozens of unplayed games. Sometimes I play games not out of enjoyment but to tick it off my list.
This habit has influenced the types of games I buy. I rarely get a game with unknown mechanics, focusing more on linear shooters. No time to get into base building mechanics with their untransparent economy and tech-trees.
If RTS want to become popular again then their approachability needs to change. Streamline techtrees and controls, automate more (what if every skill was autocast?). But Make it so individual micro always triumphs over automation.
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In my opinion a WC4 should be even more hero focused. Maybe the hero is the one building stuff; forget peons etc.
I don't think that's entirely true. Nowadays gaming isn't what it used to be, due to it going mainstream. If you look at it from a percentage perspective, yeah, lot of classic genres are economically unviable, or outright dead.
However, if you discard the percentages and go back to the raw numbers, the interest is still there. The original communities are still around, dormant, just waiting for a reason to come back. Some of the really successful remasters/remakes from these last years prove it to be true.
Gaming has been a shitshow since a few years ago, and most of the original videogame audience has moved away, sticking to old games, moving to indies, or getting new hobbies altogether. These disenfranchised players crave for the good old days, and they will rush back the moment someone takes the first step.
You can't revive the RTS genre by going mainstream. You have to stay loyal to the core values of the genre, and then build up from there. If you try to please both audiences at once, you will fail spectacularly. The key is to keep the classic formula, with some quality of life features here and there, and the game will grow up from there. Just like videogames used to work in the past.
Warcraft 4 won't happen in many years, and when it does, it won't look like an RTS, or it will be a bad copy of its spiritual successor, which is bound to be released some day.
I wouldn't mind talking RTS game design though, but maybe we should open another thread.