Why did RTS stop focusing on single player and campaigns? Post your favourite sp-focused strategy games.
I feel like playing Starcraft again, I have never beaten BW campaign and it's remaster seems kinda cool (unlike wc3 recrapped)
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>Why did RTS stop focusing on single player and campaigns?
I think other genres probably handle SP content better. Devs were rehashing the same scenarios for decades and struggle to bring anything fresh to the table at this point. The thing about RTSes is that the gameplay isn't very varied, there's little replay value and half the time you're just abusing AIs deficiencies to win because apparently computers can't handle them as gracefully as they play chess.
The one game that I feel gave me a proper workout that's both challenging and fair was Core Contingency campaign on hard where you have to pick up the pace to not get overwhelmed. I like replaying it every so often.
>Very little replay value
Please speak for yourself, anon
No. The real reason developers stopped having campaigns are because most modern games and their ridiculously bloated budgets cut costs whenever possible. If you wanna shell out 10K for those high-tech shaders, you aren't gonna be able to allocate the budget or even have the time to focus elsewhere
So as games just kept getting more complex, and the majority leap from 2-D graphics to 3-D definitely played a part, games just stopped having stories in them because it just isn't really in the budget
SC was only in development for about 2 years, and counting the time spent developing the expansion, 3.
SC2 started development in 2007, and concluded in 2015. Even still, it's noticeably lighter on Blizzard-produced content that drives the story forward.
SC1 had Precursor, Enslavers, Enslavers 2, and the Stukov micro-campaign in addition to the 6 campaigns included with it and its expansion.
That's 10 campaigns to SC2's 4.
>Precursor, Enslavers, Enslavers 2, and the Stukov micro-campaign
The what? First time hearing about this.
There all cannon except for Enslavers 2. Precursor is nice mini campaign with full voice acting.
Enslavers 2 is still canon, its story is continued in the novels.
Really? I swear it was not but good to be corrected. I need to do play through of it now.
Back in the day, Blizzard produced 4 additional campaigns to fill in blanks in the lore and general add more content to the game
Enslavers actually shipped with the game. What, you never play a custom game before? It's right there in the campaign folder.
Enslavers had a great remake in mass recall too bad the later parts of it are buggy as hell
You're wrong and the anon you're replying to is right. You're a moron. Have you only played Starcraft?
imo RTS campaigns had never a more interesting place to go than what they were conceived to be in the early 2000s. it always just comes down to putting down a base and destroying the enemy positions, or fending off a horde of units. i think sc2 did a pretty good job with its campaign but its still kinda stale and niche
also esports money broke peoples brains
They didn't. Spellforce 3 and it's expansions have awesome campaigns.
I really hate the fetch quest missions where you can't build and it's just running around. I like the rest quite a bit.
>Post your favourite sp-focused strategy games.
Deserts of Kharak has some of the best single player campaign writing and mission structure in recent memory. It actually feels like you're on a proper military campaign with strategic goals and considerations working in concert with various elements and support rather than being yet another plucky group of rebels that wins wars and saves everyone from a universe ending threat singlehandedly despite not having any resources or plan.
Yeah I adored DOK, my only complaint is that it was too short.
sp players play the game once and they're gone
mp player keep the community alive + esports
it's that simple
>sp players play the game once and they're gone
lol no. The real reason is that it is easier and cheaper to just make a MP game then do some blance patches when the community shits their pants over something.
And why is that a bad thing? A game is supposed to be fair, it doesn't have to be fair when you're playing against braindead, easily exploitable AI. MP is the real challenge, not blatantly cheating AI which is still fairly easy to beat.
And your statement isn't true either, I'm yet to see an RTS without any SP content,
>it doesn't have to be fair when you're playing against braindead, easily exploitable AI
And why is that a bad thing? A game is supposed to be fair when it's multiplayer, why does it matter if it's not fair when it's not against another player? Why is that something you're against?
it's easier to make an arena versus game and call your shittly balanced game "multiplayer" and try to monetize player's social interactions.
it's harder to make a balanced esport. that's why it took SC2 like 10 years.
Sc2s coop mode is literally the most played mode and it was an afterthought made in a few months possibly weeks
That doesn't make sense. If the player paid for the game, it doesn't matter if he keeps playing or not. If anything it's the SP babbies who keep spending money on sequels, dlcs, collector's editions, horse armor, and jump between different games to begin with. Now the only thing MP chads are spending is their time. They neither need nor want new games because the old ones let them bully newbs for hundreds of hours just fine.
>it doesn't matter if he keeps playing or not.
If your company is good at managing hype and getting day one sales, sure. Firaxis has that down. Civbabs don't even think about multiplayer as a possibility.
If you think you'll need players to actually like your games and stick around to sell them to other players for you, or if you just have personal pride as a game developer, MP will be more your speed.
Also, just bundle the SP content with the new factions or whatever the MPgays like. Easy sales.
>Civbabs don't even think about multiplayer as a possibility.
Pretty much, I'm having a lot of fun throughout my 400 hours of playing vs AI mostly on king. Games are sometimes supposed to be a power fantasy and single player games fits perfectly into this.
"Civbabs" were playing by email before your parents born.
because a functional AI is hard to code i guess
In the year of 2022, wouldn't it be feasible to train neural network to play better than handcoded AIs?
Yes but dev teams have not been trained on how to do that or how to implement it. You will likely see experiments on neural network training for video game AI over the next decade and it might become a standard feature by 2030s. You have to remember that the reason innovation has slowed down is not due to a lack of technological development but because the vast majority of people involved in game design at the moment have no passion for it. If there is no support for something in say the Unreal engine it won't be in the big games.
But anyway, the quality of AI is not actually the reason why single player games dropped off.
only if your single goal is making it as difficult as possible. but it's not. your goal is to make it fun to play against. and since you can't define metrics for this - not without breaking the budget by a few billion, anyway - you can't run a NN on the task.
you could train it on the live servers if you have a willing playerbase who will consistently rate their experiences, but the entire game will immediately turn into how you can best game and manipulate the AI. which may be an interesting game overall for a vertain demographic, but it's not an good computer opponent in AOE2.
Well, there was alphastar for sc2 and they had to limit its apm so that it wouldn't outright rape everyone.
Because it is easier to make a multiplayer game. You don't have to write campaigns, or make maps or whatever. Just random generated (or handful of pre-definied) maps and let people whack each other.
Oh, and obviously, because you don't have to do any of those things, it's also much cheaper.
>I feel like playing Starcraft again
I'm actually replaying the campaign (last time I did I was 13) and I'm really enjoying it. When you play as an adult it's a whole new experience.
Starcraft 2 had an extensive campaign. The story might had been trash but singleplayer had plenty of content and variety. I can't think of a single AAA RTS that doesn't have a campaign.
>The story might had been trash
Yep, steaming pile of garbage, but the missions themselves - plenty of fun playing.
Because people play RTS for mp, its a most skill intensive and most hardcore mp genre. Learning RTS in itself is hard and you pay hard for misplays even in campaigns so casuals cannot handle those. So why bother?
If you are looking for a great modern campaign, check coh2 ardennes assault.
>Why did RTS stop focusing on single player and campaigns?
There was general trend of moving away from single player.
I like the mods for sudden strike 2
Iron Harvest just came out with a big SP focused update. The game itself is kind of eh but that's on them.
people don't want you developing an identity outside of the collective consciousness. introspection leads to thought which can be dangerous.
>tfw none mentioned Majesty
Because it's not an RTS. The game is typically referred to as a 'fantasy kingdom sim'.
RTS stop focusing on single player?
I think the better question is, why do RTS barely get made at all?
And the answer is it's not as profitable nor as cheap to make as a lootbox mobile game.