How the RTS genre is a victim of Survivorship Bias (response to eSports Storyteller)

I was watching a video by eSports Storyteller about why Starcraft 2 hasn't been doing well over the last few years, and with Stormgate coming out soon, I wanted to talk about it, what I think is wrong with the RTS community, and what could be done to fix it.
here is that video: • What might have caused...

[@lotgc]

Hey guys! So this video took off a lot more than I anticipated. I decided to redo this video because I wasn't quite satisfied with the quality, so if you would, please check my redo of this video, and I encourage you to subscribe to my new channel that I've dedicated to RTS stuff, RTS Apologist kzbin.info/www/bejne/Y4C1fWCvZ8p7aKssi=H4-8gSBdnKL9kkRe

[@goliver9991]

most of giant grant games content now is playing modded campaign which everyone can download and try for themselves, there are mods that make it harder, but there are those which make it goofier or easier, his audience funded most if not all of the mods

[@lotgc]

That's great. I think that's a good omen

[@paddathurpadane6828]

@@lotgca recomendation from me is to watch the two videos of his that is about that the next rts is going to fail its kind of simular to your video

[@lotgc]

@@paddathurpadane6828 yeah I've seen them. They are good.

[@hideshisface1886]

The thing that bugs me is lack of innovation. RTS as a genre needs something that will kick it into overdrive - it needs it own equivalent of Doom 2016. As it stands now, everything overly focuses on multiplayer, leaving campaign and modding as an afterthought at best. And almost everything tries to be another StarCraft2, another Command and Conquer and occasionally another Supreme Commander or Company of Heroes. We currently have 2 StarCraft2 copycats in the making - Stormgate and ZeroSpace. And honestly... I can't tell them apart. The only thing that even remotely puts them on the radar is being made by people passionate about SC2. But they have no real identity of their own. Same situation with Supreme Commander/Total Annihilation clones, like Zero-K or Beyond All Reason. I don't even count Command and Conquer wanna-be titles. The over-reliance on multiplayer doesn't help these games either. RTS games tend to have a higher entry barrier - and they also tend to be deceptive, when your strategy is not always about actual strategy, but simple memorisation and speed of actions. Everybody expects lightning reflexes from FPS games, but when STRATEGY is more about the APM and micro than actual strategising... It funnels new players AWAY from any sort of multiplayer. And if there is no single player to be found, or if it is clearly treated as a child of an inferior god... Considering that most RTS players barely touch multiplayer at all... That is a death knell for this kind of game. And if you are thinking I'm full of crap... Take a look at Age of Empires 2 - only 23% have even won a multiplayer OR skirmish game. Company of Heroes 2? The number of people who played any more than 100 automatch multiplayer games is less than 5%. In Dawn of War 2 less than 4% players played more than 10 ranked matches. And every single new announced RTS I see focuses on multiplayer... Despite the fact barely anyone plays it. This is basically the repeat of situation of Call of Duty wanna-be games from mid 2000s. Everybody wanted to snatch some of this Call of Duty crowd... Except there was no reason for them to leave their original game. Same with MOBA influx we had later, and Hero Shooter plague.

[@lotgc]

You do bring up a good point, and that's something I didn't get to talk about too much here, as this is more about first impressions than gameplay. I do think you're right though, single player does tend to get shafted with multiplayer getting all the attention, especially here on YT, and I think this goes back to what I was saying about survivorship bias. It's really hard to make singleplayer interesting to watch, and sure, just about every RTS KZbinr has that one playlist or two from 10 years ago when they through the campaigns of their favorite titles, but other than Giant Grant Games, you don't see a whole lot of that, and I definitely think this has caused a lot of RTS games post SC2 to forget that SP needs love too. I do think the tides are turning though. I know there is an RTS that is coming out that is exclusively SP and campaign only, so keep a note on your fridge for that one, and people like GGG and Executor Nral have really breathed new life into SP RTS, and there will likely be more in the future, and they have said that stormgate will have a bunch of dynamic campaign material, but that will have to be seen. I will disagree with you on stormgate though. I don't think it's a complete sc2 clone. Sure, it is made by a lot of guys who worked on sc2, and they will use what they know, but I've been watching a bunch of the live broadcasts of stormgate, and I'd say it actually feels more like WC3 with elements of CnC thrown in. There's not a whole lot of SC2 stuff in it, outside of the 3 races in it being suspiciously similar to the races in StarCraft.

[@VladLad]

That Starship troopers rts is unironically and unexpectedly fire though. It is very good starter/chill rts in comparison to everything else on the market, solely singleplayer. And ironically, because there is so little micro and macro that means that strategy can have more room to breathe rather than just boil down to "be faster"

[@gippygames]

Well yes, APM will always matter more than strategy in an RTS. In other genres, there are control limitations. In a racing game, your car can't go faster than its max speed. In FPS, you can't simply teleport yourself everywhere. In fighting games, your character has cooldown after every action. In an RTS, you control everything everywhere, and so APM and mechanical skill will always be a priority. This is why MOBAs are so popular: the APM is drastically reduced when you're controlling only 1 unit instead of many units. Turn-based strategy such as Civilization and Age of Wonders have been around forever, and those have great singleplayer campaigns. But they just don't sell and don't get as much hype.

[@Furydragonstormer]

I think personally Stormgate and ZeroSpace are just suffering from how their art styles feel generic and samey. The latter from what I've seen has a strong identity and setup for some of the factions, but they could work on the artstyle in the end

[@lotgc]

@@Furydragonstormer yeah, I think stormgate is trying too hard to look 'hip', if you know what I mean. I think in gameplay it actually looks pretty good, maybe if they just desaturated the colors a bit, it would look better, but really it's the promotional materials that suck. It really does look like a pixar movie... But I'm confident that it will change with time. Idk about zerospace though. I'm very suspicious of it. I think it looks kinda ugly, and I really don't like that it's being made by a bunch of SC2 pros. I think it invites bad omens. Like, you wouldn't invite wolves to decide what is good for sheep, if that makes sense.

[@Pangora2]

When I saw Stormgate had the Warcraft Mine as its economy my first thought was "they aren't even trying." Its like if you play SC1 and the minerals are placed like its a real world location and the minerals came from the ground or crashed in from space in random patterns. The nearest gas geyser might be half a map away. Players thought, "Oh, I will have to change my layout to accommodate this." All modern maps, and specially Pro-play maps are ideally placed minerals and gases, all entrances are exactly narrow enough to allow two races to wall off entirely. How thrilling? Or not. Stormgate didn't even bother to at least have Starcraft resources where mineral lines could be fought around. Nope, just the mine from Warcraft. We had SC1, WC3, SC2 and they were like "there is nothing more we can do." Everyone in development seems to be focused on CrAzY PrO MiCrO. They want to get youtube shorts where some crazy play is pulled off. But sometimes the most fun you'll have is you and a friend playing on a map where impossible waves of AI players crash against your defences where you have so much money you don't even know expanding was a thing to do in the game. Or just playing V-Tec paintball. RTS is stuck in its formulas, and it sucks. We need RTS games from people who are NOT from the previous-made-an-RTS scene.

[@lotgc]

Yeah, Stormgate's focus on micro is a bit concerning, and it does feel rather inappropriate, since they're trying to dumb down and 'casual-fy' everything else. I don't believe it'll matter that much in the long run though, and I imagine with sufficient input it can be changed. I'm also kinda not a fan of the gold- I mean, 'lumanite deposit' or whatever. The other resource, therium, is also basically just the ore/tiberium from CnC. I will give them benefit of the doubt though, because just about everything else has already been done a million times, so we'll have to see if they can atleast make them interesting lore-wise. Maps are an interesting topic, and I think I will do a video about that sometime, but yeah, I really hate this hyper-sterilized, no-fun-allowed crap we've had to endure forever. I'd kill for an RTS that has the smooth and solid mechanics of a modern RTS, with the asymmetrical, nonsensical maps of classic RTSs

[@brendonbarr6136]

FYI, the SC2 background isn't just a picture. It's only because you're playing on lower graphical settings.

[@lotgc]

That's what I thought at first, but I turned my game graphics up all the way to ultra, and they were still just jpegs that didn't do anything. Edit, 30 minutes later: hey wait a minute. I'm also not convinced what you're saying is completely true, because the planets and clouds backgrounds both work just fine in low settings. If those two work just fine, how come the others don't work in low settings?

[@paddathurpadane6828]

@@lotgcbecouse some of them are only pictures but thats not true for all of them

[@georgekincannon765]

@@lotgc Idk, that's really weird. All of the examples of still backgrounds you showed in the video ARE animated for me. The characters kinda move around. My favorite background is the one with nova zeroing in on some dominion soldiers.

[@lotgc]

@@georgekincannon765 that's crazy... My installation must be busted or something. I don't really know how that's possible, I just reinstalled the game like 2 weeks ago.

[@JN_Sc2]

@@lotgc It depends on two settings afaik: Shaders must be set to High or Ultra and models have to be set to High as well.

[@Doombacon]

The two biggest problems with custom maps in SC2 are that the map editor on release was significantly weaker than what we had in WC3 making it difficult to justify learning the new tools and the arcade page itself just being a list of all the customs people had ever played regardless of if anyone was looking to play the game. The best moments in BW and WC3 was opening the custom game list and seeing something you had never seen before and since the list was sorted in the order rooms had been made it was very common to see some really niche maps pop up periodically. With the SC2 browser you need to know what game you want to play and then hope that other people are looking to play that version of that map and have independently chosen to play it without any ability for you to alert people to your interest in game.

[@havior6617]

Great summary, I have been saying that RTS and SC2 especially has been suffering from survivorship bias for years, and I get weird looks when I talk to SC2 players in person at events when I try to argue that Brood War is more welcoming to new players.

[@lotgc]

@@havior6617 I guess great minds think alike 😏 I'm actually making a 'take 2' of this video, because I wasn't expecting it to blow up like it did, and I didn't like the quality. I will also be putting it on a new channel, so keep an eye out for 'RTS Apologist' in the near future.

[@AlexandreSejournant]

Winter has continued the Bronze League Heroes saga, and Pig has both the Florencio Files and The Salt Mines, I recommend all of those But yes, I agree that RTS and many games in general hyperfocus on the competitive scene and tend to forget about making a fun game. Blizzard is very responsible for that, whenever they make a game they aim for either live service or competitive, and their latest with Overwatch and HotS kinda proves that it's a bubble that they hold up by themselves, and as soon as they don't prop it up "it's a dead game" I fondly remember playing custom maps on Warcraft3 - and the PvP was a thing I tried twice, but got destroyed and grifted by a team mate, so I never touched it again. Also for SC2 being janky with the backgrounds not animating for you and some tabs being broken ... just remember that they messed up so bad they removed Archon mode ladder by accident and decided that /shrug they were not gonna put it back. The "team" maintaining the game is probably just an intern with no knowledge of the codebase

[@Dmitrisnikioff]

It's fascinating because I remember being furious as a teen that this fucking Everquest rip-off based of the Frozen Throne Orc campaign was going to stop Warcraft 3 from coming out. I never gave the tiniest of shits about multiplayer. I played for story and challenges.

[@lotgc]

It's unfortunate how things don't always change for the better, isn't it?

[@Saltarian1]

I bought SC2 upon its release with my lunch money, and boy, did I love and play the heck out of it! Even though I never got beyond Gold in 1v1, I had a great time playing with friends in 3v3, where we reached Platinum. Also, the custom maps were so good. With time, it became even harder to keep up with the game, and I switched to other games, only coming back to play the HotS and LotV campaigns. Thanks for the video!

[@Smogne]

Man... I played Wings of Liberty for years on launch (my highest ranks was Platinum). To me it was great. The expansions made it a lot less interesting in my experience (and the zerg camping is, to me, really badly written). It became more and more micro focused and now the early game is a lot less interesting to me, since you start with a lot more workers and is streamlined... it changed early game plays a lot. Did not liked it.

[@WonderingWanderer88]

To be fair, PiG, Harstem and Winter cast lower leagues games every now and then. I do agree it'd be nice to have some casts of low leagues more often...

[@lotgc]

@@WonderingWanderer88 I didn't name any names specifically, but yeah, that would be great. I'd love to see more team games and FFAs though. I feel like I hardly see any ever. I'm pretty sure I haven't actually seen any FFAs since LotV came out, and that was like 8 years ago... 🤔

[@acridcesium_9971]

As someone who mainly just watches SC through youtube but mainly plays Age of Empires 3 as my RTS of choice, I feel like that series generally adapted to changing times better because it's competitive scene even in AoE2 never got as massive as SC2/BW did. So when the Definitive Editions came out one of the biggest advertised features were the Art of War scenarios which were basically an advanced tutorial about how to do things like eco properly or have a build order. While a bunch of the AoE playerbase are people who've been playing it since the 90s or early 2000s the fact that there is an onramp for new people to start playing while SC sort of uses the campaigns for that but they're not 100% focused on being a tutorial leads to people from what I've seen either repeatedly running into ladder and getting stomped until they get better or just sticking to the campaigns/coop which are generally much slower paced outside of some mutations or mods. The whole esports/competitive obsession is more of an industry wide problem but Blizzard has it really bad looking at Overwatch and HotS especially.

[@lotgc]

That's very interesting. I actually haven't tried AoE yet, so I'll have to look into it.

[@YoshiKirishima]

Survivorship is definitely a thing I feel that people don't account for. If you try to suggest making Mech viable (and not just viable all 3 MUs but well designed of course, so it's fun to play as and play against, and fun to watch), almost everyone is super against it, despite positional mech (like BW mech) being such a basic traditional RTS style. (Fortifying positions, buildings static defense on the map, sieging, methodical play in general). Why is this, when there was more openness towards making it viable back then, and giving each race the most variety possible? Well of course, almost all the people who liked mech and wanted to see mech as a viable style for Terran have already quit playing and watching. People who currently still watch and play the game and do not prefer the mech style, are not considering that perhaps there would be a good audience that would be re-attracted to the game (or successor game) if the mech style would become at least a bit viable. They don't seem to care about re-attracting audiences that have been lost.

[@lotgc]

That is a good point. I'm glad you brought that up

[@foxbeans1509]

What do you mean by mech? I'm not familiar with RTS lingo, is this referring to mecha? Short for mechanical?

[@lotgc]

@@foxbeans1509 yes, that's correct. Vehicles and machines that exist on the ground. Air units don't count, atleast, I've never seen anyone actually call air units 'mech'

[@Pangora2]

Another issue is that there are so many games. Even if you Love SC2...SC1, etc, well, today i want to play Close Combat II. Tomorrow I want to play War in the East. Maybe a Paradox game on the weekend. People rotate in and out of games more, there are so many, and old games don't stop being good.

[@lotgc]

@@Pangora2 that is true, but I don't think that's RTSs fault. That's just kinda the modern gaming landscape in general, and there's no escaping it. The question, in the case of Stormgate, is if Frost Giant can prove to be cost effective. I think if they're at least financially successful, it could put a lot of confidence in the genre, and Stormgate could be the game that walked for later games to run.

[@JamesDeanoli]

Multiplayer games have inevitably moved towards comp scenes. This essentially means that for a comp game to be successful/popular it must be easy to get into and play. That is NOT rts, especially not these days when juxtaposed with 'skilled' players. The sheer amount of time investment required to even begin to feel like you are playing against players and not the game mechanics via micro/macro is extensive and will always negatively impact modern rts. Then you have the additional issue of rts mostly being 1v1 games which adds even more pressure on the individual. This is a fact of life and isn't going to change anytime soon. This is why first person shooters, battle royals, and mobas are as successful as they are and RTS will continue to be a more niche genre.

[@lotgc]

I agree with you for the most part, but this is why I think presentation is very important and that's why I made half my video dedicated to advice on how to better present the game to new players. You want to create an environment that is inviting and exciting. It is true that RTS can be very difficult and scary, but just because it's difficult, doesn't mean it's not fun. There are plenty of games lately that are very difficult, yet have been doing very well for themselves, and the reason I think they do so well it's because they have created an atmosphere that attracts you back into the game, and I think RTS could learn a lot from that.

[@BellePepprs]

There's been significant changes made to the UI over time, I remember back in WOL days when ladder allowed you to pick diff types (1v1, 2v2, etc.) and your race (to random!). But I do think you have a point about survivorship bias - how the only people left in SC2 are the hardcore people who are into the whole esports aspect of it. It's something other games like Rainbow 6 Siege face as well, except SC2 does have custom games. Every skill-based game is littered with the remains of those who couldn't get good past a certain point and left (me included), or had other things to do with their time. Games are big business now, and esports are the most easily monetizable. I think the UI has just been updated over time to reflect this shift towards accomodations for the older, hardcore crowd, and why 1v1 Versus is given this privileged spot in the MP gamelist. Grant has managed to carve a niche for custom modded campaigns through his fanbase and patrons. Someone just needs to dedicate themselves to providing support and spotlight to all the amazing custom games that I don't even know if are still being supported. I too miss Nexus Wars, that tower defence game, and all the hours I spent getting good at Empire (or whatever that game was called)

[@harz632]

CSGO and League had a very naturally evolving pro scene, the pro scene grew so big and profitable that all the other games now are forced by the producer to focus on the pro aspect to get as successful and profitable as the other games. This means that games are artificially pushed into the pro scene even if they aren't meant for it.

[@BellePepprs]

@@harz632 CSGO, League and R6 are kind of distinct because they're primarily multiplayer games where the focus on balance in game design naturally lends itself to pro-league viability because it enables more raw competition. This is something that EFT Arena, for example, probably will never really have so long as the mechanics of Arena are made similar to EFT itself. SC2 MP was heavily influenced by esports consideration in its design, but you can have that as a single-player experience with its campaigns and arcade/customs. You can see the different commercialization pathways for SP vs MP oriented games overall, and SC2 clearly took the MP pathway. I don't feel enough for this to go dig into financials so I only assume that the game directors thought this would be the more profitable path and the one that would draw more fans - it's interesting to think of an alternative pathway SC2 could have taken where it released more DLC campaigns after Nova Ops.

[@harz632]

@@BellePepprs my point was that games like Overwatch and HOTS were artificially forced into being a competitive game and was kept Alice by Blizzard but the moment they didn't support it anymore it crumbled. If valve or riot stopped supporting pro play tomorrow you'd still have albeit smaller a pro scene and tournaments.

[@Luuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu]

I thought this was just a normal recommended video cause I recently looked into RTS or I think that's the genre I mean idk. didn't expect to watch this and realize it's from the fumo channel xD anyway I recently played anno 1800 I think it's called on ps5 with a friend. sadly after trying combat I realized all the flaws. it only has ship combat no ground troops. it's also super ass to try to manage the ships with the controller and not being able to zoom out enough to even see my whole fleet. also I thought I forgot to add npc players turns out they are not available for multiplayer that's also very ass. there also were known issues about routes and stuff not working as you'd expect clogging the economy the only thing that allowed me to survive was making soap farms and selling soap for easy money. anyway started looking for RTS on youtube which games are coming out and stuff and might interest me but they all looked ass to me. would love something with like twenty first century world. working economy. ground troops and stuff etc etc idk there seems to be a lot of potential fun in this game genre which I could get a taste off. from ur vid though I imagine it fell off like every other game genre :(

[@lotgc]

That sounds rough But yeah, I see what you mean. Stormgate legit looks like a friggin' pixar movie, and I don't think that's really a vibe you want in a game where you send little people to their deaths... I'll still support support it though, since it's really our best shot right now. I'd love to see a new command and conquer though. Have you heard about D.O.R.F though? I think that might be a little more your speed. Now that's a game I'm really hyped for.

[@Luuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu]

@@lotgc aaaaa just wrote a reply but clicked off and it got deleted. tldr: stormgate is not the style I would like it looks like LoL xD I saw dorf in the upcoming RTS game list but I like realism. Watched a vid about all the Command and Conquer releases that is way more up my alley. I played some empire earth game as a kid I loved to nuke AI cavemen that was epic. Thanks for the recommendations though!

[@yesterte3359]

Nice video man, you explainned pretty well most of the problems whit the RTS in general, my dad showed it to me whit WC3 when i was like 8 and i totally loved it but since then i saw the slow decay of it, I dont play too offten and I consider myself a casual player, I see that the main problem whit it, its that its not too begginer or casual friendly, like you said, its almost totally focused in the competitive scene; I hope new upcoming games like stormgate bring a new breeze of air for it. It has loooooot of work to do since i think ot looks almost like a MOBA in its actual state but its the best shot, hope you do well, thanks for sharing your opinion! ❤ Oh and sorry if im not too clear or if there's too many gramatical mistakes, english it's not my main lenguage and im still learning it. 😀

[@lotgc]

Thanks for sharing, and your English is very good. I wouldn't have known if you hadn't told me

[@erfarkrasnobay]

GGG already pointed out issue with his vio of "next RTF will fail" and he _kinda_ right. RTS that sole focus is competivive 1v1 is... DOA. And everything I saw about Stormgate say they are also DOA, overhype 3rd faction with lame idea of "celestials vs demons", not showing anything about story mode, idea of "dozen of missions per year". And this is HOW I see that they are from blizzard. Same blizzard that make OW league. They want E-sport but doesn't know how to make e-sport. Do you want check what modern RTS capable of? Check RTS-ARPG Riftbreaker, check Survival RTS of They are billions, or auto-RTS of Desynced. e-sport mob want "competitivnes" over fun. But did they came to RTS because of comptitivens? Or because CnC briefings or Warcraft story?

[@lotgc]

I guess it's true what they say; old habits die hard... I will remain hopeful though. It looks like FG will be focusing on the 3vE and 1v1; the very casual, and the very competitive, but they haven't really done a good job showing off the 3vE, so that's why I think things look kinda bad right now. There's also a very noticeable hole in the middle between them. I imagine it will be occupied by the 3v3 crowd, and if we're loud enough early enough, we can potentially push FG to course correct.

[@doltBmB]

They abandoned their core audience to chase esports, we've been over this a million times. That's what happened. At this point you have a large portion of "dormant" RTS players waiting for it to blow over, but with the only games coming out being remakes or shit like stormgate, it's not blown over yet, and this lack of enthusiasm for making the same mistake over and over for decades isn't going to galvanize any kind of response.

[@lotgc]

Yep, you're right, but I think you gotta give Stormgate another look. I was in the same boat until I checked out their steam page by chance, and I changed my mind They've been showing off streams of the game on their steam page, and granted, it's the same 1v1 crap with all the usual suspects like always, but the gameplay itself actually looks pretty solid. As for the art style, they have made some improvements recently, but they also picked up Samwise Didier about 3 months ago, but it'll have to be seen if he can help turn things around

[@doltBmB]

@@lotgc It looks really, really bad to be honest, even as a starcraft/warcraft clone it looks terrible.

[@lotgc]

@@doltBmB I don't think it looks _that_ bad, and I think 'clone' is not an accurate description. Can you tell me what it is you don't like? My complaint is that everything does look really bright. If they would desaturate it a bit, that'd be great.

[@doltBmB]

@@lotgc not calling it a clone is a symptom of a starcraft-only player. the whole game just looks like it plays bad

[@lotgc]

@@doltBmB I play 4 RTSs daily and only one of them is a blizzard game. If stormgate is a clone, then by your definition every modern sci-fi story would be a Dune knock-off. That's not really how a clone works. I think you're just being jaded, which, I mean, I don't blame you, but I do think you're being somewhat unreasonable, especially since you didn't answer my question; what do YOU think is wrong with Stormgate?

[@Smogne]

I stopped playing the online ladder on SC 2 once HOTS came out (life circunstancies made my personal PC unavailable for years). Before that I played Wings of Liberty for quite a bit (I have the physical box of the base game and both expansions) and was Gold/Platinum on the 1v1 ladder. I did played all the campaigns (and that's why I fully agree with you. Wings of Liberty is great, HOTS has bad writing and Legacy of the Void is meh). On it's first years, the game, to me, was great. Both on custom and normal games. Never had an issue on playing both of them (the arcade was full of games. I spend at least 1/3 of my time on SC 2 there). The "modernizing and streamlining" updates are what made it worse. At least that's my opinion once I came back to play it again many years after stopping... I just can't get back on the new faster game speed, higher worker count on the start, change on the achievement system and the new units. It just simply made the game a lot more micro heavy, killed early game strategies and to me, that is very uninteresting... hell, I've been watching Brood War competitive games again now and that's a lot more interesting and entertaining to me than the newer version of SC 2. The game play is a lot more interesting to follow.

[@lotgc]

Aw man, I had one of those physical boxes too! It didn't work, but I loved reading over it all the time. I also had the SC1 battlechest. I loved that thing so much, even the Prima official strategy guides, which I'm pretty sure were mostly wrong. If physical releases were still pretty relevant today, I would definitely have did a section on it. And I agree with you about LotV. I thought it was cool when they made it you had 12 workers, but now I'm not a fan of that. I feel like it killed off the sorta rock paper scissors dynamic that existed in HotS, where you could macro at the cost of a smaller army, or rush and make a larger army at the cost of a weaker economy, or forgo both and cheese. I didn't really talk about the actual gameplay for SC2, but if I did, I would have talked all about that.

[@Smogne]

@@lotgc I fell ya friend. I'm 30, SC1 was part of my childhood hahaha. Played it a lot online and once 2 came out played it a lot too! I legit think WoL is a great game. Age of Empires, Star Craft and Command and Conquer were (and still are) some of my top games of all time.

[@Pangora2]

Very same story and feelings. WoL boxed, HotS came out and I played a multi match but was so consumed by a second job I didn't have time. I was Plat/fighting Diamonds, so when I wanted to come back I was so out of practice I didn't want to be fighting guys that were in practice at my old level.

[@somebodyWhoExistsIGuess]

I'm honestly baffled as to why you would think that the campaigns should all be free. Why would the company even make free campaigns for a free game? Purely "pay for skins" based games almost never feature campaigns of any significance, for obvious reasons (skins matter more in multiplayer than solo). As a side note, there are actually a lot of free campaigns for SC2, but they are made by the community not by a game dev company, and many of them require that you own some/all of the base campaigns due to reused assets.

[@lotgc]

I didn't mean to imply that they should be _free,_ I was trying to say that they should be priced _reasonably._ Imo 40 bucks for all the other campaigns except WoL is just highway robbery, because they are just not great. I'd even say the WoL campaign is worth 40 just by itself. But that's just my opinion. Although, now I wonder what would happen if stormgate did the reverse; give the campaign for free, and charge for multiplayer... 🤔

[@raevar9779]

Having the custom tab as the main tab is a really bad take. The arcade is great and all, and I loved playing different games in them. But Starcraft is an RTS and in your video you want to talk about RTS games. And the Arcade does not contain solely RTS but a mix of everything custommade. In a way you are saying, that the best thing for an rts to have is a modlauncher to not play rts.

[@lotgc]

I'm glad you brought that up. I see I wasn't very clear with that. I didn't realize that arcade was now with the custom games tab, because like I said, the custom games tab has never functioned correctly for me, so I was in ignorance of how it worked, my bad! I didn't mean to suggest that the only way to play an RTS was to not play it as it was intended. What I was trying to get at, but failed to articulate very well, was that in some RTS games, like DOW, you can change all kinds of gamerules in the custom games settings, like starting resources, resource collection rate, allied settings, game speed, victory conditions, etc., and create very unique gameplay. Now, I'm gonna disagree with you a bit. I don't think all 'arcade' games (as in, a custom made map that plays completely different from standard gameplay) completely deviate from the spirit of RTS. RTS is a very broad genre. Like, if you look at the custom games list in BW, there's a lot of arcade games that I would still say are in the spirit of RTS, like the Risk and desert storm maps. Like really the only non-RTS maps you'll find are the tower defence games, but with how ubiquitous tower defence games are, you might as well consider them part of the 'normal' RTS experience.

[@raevar9779]

​@@lotgc Thanks for the clarification. I completely agree with you that the possibility to change the settings is great. Sadly, Blizzard implemented their extension system far to late and in a way that it is not feasible for a casual/new player to change the settings easily. And i hope that FrostGiant is going to implement a better system. (The buddy bot seems to go in a good direction) I do not think that we disagree in the second point. I used a hyperbole to make a point and it lost its meaning because of that. My bad. I did not mean to say that there are no rts games in the arcade. There are many, and some of them are amazing. But I think that this ( as in the arcade) should be the goto tab for new players. In my opinion, it would have been better to completely separate arcade and custom games, so that you could build a journey like campaign -> coop -> custom -> team -> solo, and have the arcade as a different entity that is more or less unrelated from the "actual" game.

[@mynameisforrest]

StarCraft Broodwar 12 days of christmas

[@lotgc]

Oh yeah, I remember that. That was great

[@mynameisforrest]

@@lotgc I usually come back to this one around christmas once a year :)

[@violetnred]

kind of eh video, but i very much agree with the idea. could look more at other genres and see how they evolved while most RTSes stick to the same format that was invented 30 years ago.

[@lotgc]

@@violetnred eh, I kinda disagree. I do think there was quite a bit of innovation in the early 2000's, but like with many problems of RTS, innovation kinda died after StarCraft 2 came out. Sc2 really destabilized the genre, and now it's too risky to try anything new. We can also get into the question of what does it mean to innovate? This is something I've heard a lot of people say, but I don't think I've seen anyone explain what they mean.

[@violetnred]

@@lotgc what i see is genre being stuck in deathmatch arena format. "doom clones" evolved into shooter and action games, racing games evolved into driving games, RPGs became open-world and such. they changed the format while keeping the basic idea. RTS? same ol' rectangular arenas completely disconnected from previous or next rectangular arenas. no amount of unit quirks or hotkey improvements gonna change that. some 4X games are real-time and therefore should be considered as an evolution branch of the genre, but there's still no RTS where you could just... drive away your base or commander and just chill for a moment. it's always about growing faster, about completing the singular objective at (usually) any cost. i'm only aware of one RTS-RTT hybrid - it's that other recent game about WW1 - that allows concluding a map without reaching full victory or full defeat. again, other genres learned to allow to just play without having to win or lose, without having the map end.

[@lotgc]

@@violetnred I think I can see what you mean, but I think that's more of a fault of the competitive pit that RTS has fallen into over the years than lack of innovation. They've essentially maximized all the fun out of map design for the sake of quick thrills and fairness. It's like in COD, right? For the longest time it was same 3 lane crap over and over every year, while they introduced other mechanics, like the movement abilities that nobody cares about. Then in MW2019 they finally changed the map design. This is why I brought up the maps StarCraft 1 came with in my video, but I guess I didn't do a good job expanding on it. A lot of them are very weird and wonderful, like there was a 5 player map that was literally just a giant pentagram, and you mentioned you wanted something where you could pull out and chill? Oh yeah, there were a bunch of island maps where if you were about to die, you could just fly away to a new island and be able to chill for a good 15-20 minutes until another enemy finds you. These maps allowed for games you could never see today because A) they're not perfectly symmetrical down to the pixel, so they're not balanced, and B) a lot of these maps had resource and size issues, so they weren't very fun to watch because the action wouldn't start for almost 10 minutes and could last a full hour, and they were often pretty low tech games because vespene was usually in low supply, so players couldn't really get all the fun stuff until very late in the game. So basically TLDR, we killed innovation for the sake of theatrics. We killed off innovation for the sake of people who aren't even playing the game. So it's a good thing Stormgate will be coming with a map editor. In the event Frost Giant doesn't want to make their game actually 'fun,' then I will do it myself.

[@violetnred]

@@lotgc 👌 i can see what you mean, even tho i don't entirely agree with examples. but yeah, stuff like boring homogeneous maps doesn't help.

[@lotgc]

@@violetnred yeah, it doesn't matter how interesting the game's mechanics are if the maps are the same garbage over and over. It's like painting really, it doesn't matter how good or expensive your paints are if your canvas is worthless.

[@palapapa0201]

Where fumo

[@lotgc]

*IN A MINUTE!* I spent like a week on this, but don't worry, I got a good one coming up.

[@skoub3466]

Not all rts came from sc Look at Sanctuary for exemple

[@lotgc]

I never said that they did 🤨

[@foxbeans1509]

What exactly is the survivorship bias here? You don't really go into detail about the community changing or really about (classic) games other than Starcraft, (with a brief mention of soulstom.) Is the surviorship bias that SC2 didn't include a map editor? That SC2 prioritized matchmaking?

[@lotgc]

@@foxbeans1509 the survivorship bias is that everything in the community not related to 1v1 competitive has died out over the years and is, more or less, extinct. This is where the bias is; what has remained has caused a lot of RTS makers to misunderstand what the audience for their games is actually like. They're only looking at what has 'survived', but the 'survivors' only represent the most extreme of the population, the top 1%, and the game makers try to make a game that suits them, which is not what they should be doing. The other half of the video I try to explain what the bottom, say, 50% might see and feel when interacting with the game's systems outside of actual play, especially if they're not familiar with the genre at all, and advice on how to make that experience more inviting. All of this, because they really are the foundation for the game and its longevity. It should be obvious that you can't build a pyramid upside down, but often it's easy to miss the obvious when it can't be readily seen.

[@foxbeans1509]

@@lotgc Ok, that makes sense. Thank you.

[@Quin.Bioinformatics]

Im not sure if its an inside joke, but maybe replace 'Survivalship' with 'Survivorship' in the title. You say it correctly. Not trying to be an asshole. I just pick at things all day. Sorry.

[@lotgc]

Oh I didn't realize that... 🥶 I was really tired when I uploaded this

[@sonic2kk]

I dont know too much about RTS games but I appreciate the effort you put into this. Doesn't matter that it's not fumo-related, you're allowed to make other content :-)

[@shadowturtleyinyang]

starcraft 2 is dying and i think it should be allowed to go into classic status without giving it enough time to destroy itself

[@MikeGuarino69]

Microphones are like $20. No need to record on a tin can tied to a drum

[@SCARaw]

I love tincan recording tho

[@MrCattlehunter]

Blizzard has actively hated on its player base for a long time now, deliberately designing their interfaces to limit player freedom and control. Starcraft 2, Diablo 3, Hearthstone, etc., are all designed around limiting player freedom as much as possible. That's why the custom games menu is so shit, why the lobbies are garbage, why there's often literally no chat at all, etc. Blizzard knows what you want to do better than you do, and if you disagree they don't care. Go back to SC1, WC3, WoW, all of them embraced player freedom to such a degree that these players spontaneously built many still-living communities and created several whole game genres of their own out of the tools provided to them by Blizzard, for which blizz has never forgiven them. anyway. the RTS genre is a victim of player vs. player soaking up all the attention. do any survey of what people want in an RTS, a good campaign is always #1. which makes sense. the campaign is enjoyable solo at your own pace, pulls you in, lets you master the game or at least its basics in comfort, and then if you want more after that you start exploring what else is on offer. Beyond All Reason may be a great pvp game, but it's going to be more popular with youtubers than with players because it doesn't have a campaign. though at least its focus isn't 1v1 pvp, which is easily the least fun pvp bracket. wc3 and sc1/2 were always more fun in big, dumb team games where you could win or lose based on all sorts of random dumb shit, which takes so much of the tension out of the gameplay. yes you might have some rager giving you grief, but that guy's ranting is nowhere near as the voice in your own head calling you a shitter for having lost yet another 1v1 where you have nothing to blame but yourself. in fact, that rager was probably the reason you lost. yeah! let's do another game and hope we get a better teammate next one! personally, I have no hope for stormgate. its focus seems to be on the pvp side of the game so it's going to suck.

[@lotgc]

You know, I know blizzard has become awfully corrupted, but I didn't think they would stoop to such malice. I wouldn't be surprised at all though. It sounds like a great way to sift out the easily suspicious and hesitant, and replace them with the ignorantly generous. I empathize with your fears though. I've been keeping tabs on the live broadcasts on steam, and it's all the usual suspects. Although, I do think there is hope. Frost giant has said that stormgate will focus on team games, primarily 3v3, and will be more focused on the casual side of the game. Now, they haven't done a good job proving it, but I noticed yesterday that one of the maps the game will be coming with looks like it has island expansions. Now, it might just be a fluke, but I think this may be indication that what FG says is true. Think about it, right? I'm pretty sure that the last time an official 1v1 blizzard SC2 map had island expos was way back in WoL. This is a small, but potentially very meaningful detail, and so I remain hopeful. Now let's hope I don't live to regret saying that....

[@SCARaw]

Starcraft sux

[@lotgc]

@@SCARaw mods, make sure this man only has Asians on the enemy team in every game, thank you