The real reason why RTS died

RTS died because no one actually explains how to play it and how to enjoy it. Do I just calculate the prediction of every possible scenario like some supercomputer they have in Pentagon?

RTS died because once the game is solved, people just use Macros. RTS only makes sense when you don't have the tech to have the computer play the game perfectly for you.

Do I just calculate the prediction of every possible scenario like some supercomputer they have in Pentagon?

Yes. That's also how you do play 1v1 pro Quake

he is entirely correct.

i was playing "surviving mars" a few hours ago and you have to make so many clicks to do fucking anything. setting up a new mining outpost requires like 20 steps and they deplete and you just have to do it again. no thought or strategy, just busywork. you could write an autohotkey script to do it.

people don't understand what makes gameplay fun.

decision

action

reaction

you want to stack as many of those cycles together as quickly as possible. player gets to think, do, and then get a good or bad result. downtime, busywork, etc. just get in the way of that.

good games will nest those sequences inside each other: you make big decisions like what build to go (land, air, navy) and then smaller decisions with more immediate results, and so on. but if you're not deciding or acting or getting feedback, the gameplay element has failed.

building a new metal extractor:

decision

where to put it, which is really just where is closest. new dome or train station? etc. these sound like real decisions but in reality there is always one obvious best option so there's no real decision

action

a bunch of boring clicking through slow menus and a cumbersome grid

result

there is no result. all you did was move your metal extraction from X to Y.

to fix this dilemma you'd need to complexify the process of metal extraction so that more decision-making is necessary, as a start. then based on that, improve the possible outcomes that occur as a result of some sort of skill check in the action process.

anyway, /blog

But that sounds boring and tedious. Imagine doing math all day every day 24/7.

In the entire 25+ years history of RTS, "treating attention as a resource" has never ever been an attractive point of the genre. It's invented by a niche crowd who treated 1v1 apm spam competition as a source of validation, and yes it could be somewhat justified over a decade ago when the massive success of WOL allowed this sort of niche idea about RTS to thrive. But now people grew up. The idea that you can put all your mental energy into a video game and it still asks for more attention because it's a "resource" is inherently exhausting and demoralizing.

The players who refused to grow up still dominate what remains of the genre's fanbase. This is why RTS never evolved despite heavy criticisms from outside.

The only fundamental appeal of RTS and why it got popular is you get to build a base, defend against the enemy, build an army and watch it destroy their base. That's all there had ever been to the genre that made people love it.
"Why play a real time strategy game if you don't want to manage your time, endlessly multitask, harass and express your skill?" Says what's left of the RTS fanbase today. They were that tiny minority latching onto the real RTS playerbase that was contributing to all the sells. There's absolutely 0 clue as to why the vast majority of people even touched this type of game. It's not because of "skill expression and multitasking". It's because you get to watch your little army blow up the enemy which you happen to control in real time, simple as that. Yes people were excited about esports, but ultimately most SC2 players do not even touch ladder for a fact. The loudest fans today have completely perverted devs' ideas of what makes an RTS interesting and attractive. So the genre died for a good reason.

why did 1v1 fps's like q3 die off?

why did 1v1 rts games die off?

even in multiplayer 8v8 rts games like BAR each player is expected to play a specific role, and someone not doing their job can fuck things up for the whole team. Thats kindof stressful if you just want to relax and have fun.

RTS games were popular when they were still enjoyable as primary a single player experience with extended campaigns and cool settings. The moment they turned into a competitive wankfest everyone left because it's one of the hardest genres to learn and git gud at. For even those who played online a large chunk was playing custom maps for fun and you can't play Naruto dota or DBZ tower defense in Starcraft 2. The first point is also why Fightan games are nowhere near as popular as they were in the late 90s/early 2000s.

The first point is also why Fightan games are nowhere near as popular as they were in the late 90s/early 2000s.

fighting games are way more popular now than before, what the fuck are you talking about

As a WC3 veteran, the games I enjoyed the most were the ones that had a lot of action, from beginning to end. When my enemy decide to hide into his base (UD mostly), it made me want to quit out of boredom.

OP is referring mostly to SC2, but I can get his idea. Some effective strategies can be very boring to defend against and to execute, and the devs have to take that into account and discourage them with balance patches. Keeping the game fun should always be number 1 priority.

Take sports for instance. Tennis can be very entertaining to watch and to play if both parts want to exchange balls instead of going for aces all the fucking time. Seeing players throwing 230km/h aces is not fun, and you can see they don't have fun doing that either.

because it's one of the hardest genres

It's not about it being hard, it's about it not being rewarding. When considering a sum of all experience from playing it for extended period, in all likelihood it will be negative even if winning pleases you more than losing disappoints you, because moment-to-moment gameplay is stressful and not rewarding even if you're good at it. What worth is the game that brings you more stress than positive emotions? Mobashit has the same situation, which is why it's on the decline. I think shooters will never have this problem, because their moment-to-moment gameplay is intuitive and smooth to human perception.

The real reason why RTS died.

The argument that "casuals" are the only gamers left because hardcore players abandon RTS games like StarCraft II (SC2) due to its high skill ceiling and unrewarding mechanics doesn’t hold up. While SC2’s 1v1 mode demands precision in build orders, timings, and multitasking, this difficulty isn’t unique—games like CSGO, Dota 2, and Dark Souls also challenge players yet maintain thriving scenes. The real reason SC2’s competitive base shrank post-2015 wasn’t the difficulty but Blizzard’s reduced focus, with fewer updates and less esports investment compared to MOBAs or FPS titles. Hardcore players don’t flee challenge; they follow where developers invest, and RTS lost that support as the industry pivoted to trendier genres.

The claim that SC2’s gameplay loop is exhausting and unfun, with constant pressure and little freedom, reflects the author’s personal burnout rather than a genre-wide flaw. The intensity of managing resources and outsmarting opponents in real-time drew millions to RTS in its peak (e.g., SC2’s 2 million active players in 2010), and many still find it thrilling. MOBAs like League of Legends evolved from RTS roots, retaining strategic depth with team dynamics, proving the loop can adapt. The author’s suggestion that players prefer CSGO’s headshots over RTS complexity ignores that both attract dedicated fans—SC2’s decline ties more to Blizzard’s shift to Hearthstone and Overwatch than any inherent unplayability.

part 1 of 2

part 2 of 2
The idea that only "casuals" remain because hardcore players left oversimplifies the genre’s history. RTS has always balanced casuals (e.g., Age of Empires II campaign players) and hardcore competitors (ranked ladder grinders), and its decline stems from market trends, not player abandonment. Post-2010, MOBAs and battle royales dominated, pulling developer resources, while Blizzard underpromoted SC2’s co-op and arcade modes. New titles like Stormgate and Age of Empires IV (2021) show the genre adapting with tutorials, team play, and modern visuals, drawing both audiences back, proving the issue isn’t "casuals" but a lack of fresh, supported entries.

Finally, the author’s critique of Frost Giant’s Stormgate as flawed for appealing to casuals misses the mark. Balancing casual and hardcore needs isn’t new—Warcraft III thrived with campaigns and competitive play, and Age of Empires IV offers varied modes for all skill levels. Frost Giant’s approach, with streamlined mechanics and a free-to-play model, aims to grow the player base, not alienate pros, mirroring successful genre evolutions like Overwatch’s team-based shooters. RTS isn’t dead; it’s dormant due to past neglect, not design, and with new efforts, it can reclaim its place—contrary to the author’s burnout-driven conclusion.

i feel like picking up age of empires 3 again. how bad is the censorship on the steam version? this computer doesnt have a fucking cd tray because im an idiot.

So you still have the original CDs?
Why not just get a cheap USB DVD drive?

RTS died because the broad base of strategy gamers eventually filtered into other genres (citybuilders, 4x, real time tactics, turn based strategy, ect) since there was kind of an encroaching limit of what could be done with the RTS formula that wouldn't come across as derivative and the remaining die hard RTS fans stuck with Brood War and that means every noob getting into RTS in AD 2025 is either:

playing single player C&C, AOE2, or Dawn of War, having fun, but not enough to want "new RTS"

playing multiplayer brood war and getting roflstomped by koreans

i didnt even think to look if those exist, thanks anonymous.

The real reason is: You can't blame your teamates if you lose

yes you can

I love how all the comments on that post are against it when it is more on the money than anything they are saying.

Gamers are anti-intellectual in that they actively promote suppression of actual analysis of how the industry works. They will champion literal shill talking points to justify their consumerism.

Meanwhile, the companies making these games are conducting numerous psychological studies on how to make you an addict that will spend more money. They are mastering matchmaking to a T to keep you hooked. The idea isn't to maximize happiness actually (the OP gets that wrong), but to maximize engagement.

Many games don't want you to feel satisfied with your winrate. They want to keep you in a a zone (near 50%), where you don't feel so pissed off from losing that you quit. However, they don't want you winning so much where you feel like you got your fill. are satisfied, and feel like you can quit at anytime and enjoy the rest of your life. Games want you to feel like you are just a few games from boosting your winrate to achieving that full satisfaction.

For singleplayer games, the goal is to make something that will maximize the enjoyment of 90-100 IQ individuals... This naturally won't lead to heightened enjoyment of those with functioning adult brains.

For anyone that actually is curious about why games are so "shit" now, the simple answer is that it is designed not to maximize enjoyment, and it is meant to cater to low IQ individuals where singleplayer is concerned. This can be find out if you actually do research.

This can be found out if you actually do research*

A tale as old as time

Completely wrong
What ruined RTS gameplay wasn't difficult decisions, but brainless busywork

They already made a dumbed down game with this design thought process called Battle Aces. David Kim thought the only thing people enjoyed in SC2 was to make decisions like

make army

make expansion

research new tech

And boiled down the genre to a soulless turd. The truth is that for people who enjoy the genre, manually placing supply depots, placing expansions, laying out buildings to make chokepoints, clicking individual tech research are all fun mechanics. It's like making a shooter and removing the need to aim.

I need a single player natural selection 2 where you control a small group against another small group. One of the recent alien games kinda does that, but it is insanely slow.

How the hell did people handle SC1's single player if more streamlined games are still "too sweaty"?

what about those that don't report shit ever? you can't possibly know if they had sex or not. these graphs are all fraudulent, since most people on earth won't report shit to anyone

attention as a resource

Every time I hear something like this I realize that "casuals and pros" are just two fundamentally different types of people sharing the same genre. When I think of a new rts I think about big battles and building cool looking cities, I prefer 2d isometric because it looks better, and if possible I like a decent story with some campaign/character decisions on top

I don't give two fucks about gook spam, I will get hardcore at a game only if it's one I like enough to play that long.

Because it's fun, and it's cool. It may be more clunky and awkward but it's more fun to experience, so you want to play it more, and before you know it you've gotten good at it.

Didn't read, skill issue

Wehrmacht

holy BASED

With cheat codes.

driving a tank straight through your infantry

i would say such a thing diminishes the logistical aspect of strategy. but the game certainly makes up for that in other areas.

over the course of days or weeks. play campaign for a bit, go online and play paintball or freeze tag or whatever

?
They are either going macro or timing attack or all in
You have to scout

?
Even fucking hoi4 has micro spam if you are playing at all competitively
Every single game that isn't totally turn based, will have APM requirements in a 1v1 setting

I agree insofar as that casuals ultimately are the people who keep the game alive (as basically no new players approach the game from competitive point of view: it's that they play the campaign or other "casual" game modes, and if they like those, perhaps 10% of the players dip their toes to the ladder - without supporting casuals you simply won't have any new blood), and that the important thing is not to design game to "EXPRESS YOUR SKILL", but to make moment-to-moment gameplay fun.

However, I would argue that RTS "died", not because they are innately a bad source of endorphins, but because *Craft/AoE-style 1vs1 games are inherently niche. RTS games undoubtedly have various "draws" like building defensible bases, commanding armies, microing powerful hero units, LARPing Napoleon, etc, but since the Golden Age of RTS entire subgenres (like Grand Strategy, ASSFAGGOTs, tower defense, etc) have been born or risen into the mainstream, and for vast majority of players these service those "draws" better than the overall RTS package. If anything, I'm surprised how strong the genre is still going, albeit on back of several older titles that have more polish and support (from the community) than any game with AA budget or lower is likely to ever have.

I also agree that there's some kind of fundamental issue with core gameplay structure of RTS games as perceived (ie. *Craft/AoE formula), but I wouldn't connect it with moment-to-moment frustration (not everyone is Artosis) or even importance of mechanical component per se, but "prevalence of meta-strategy over strategy", especially until you're already incredibly good. By this I mean things such as a novice player literally handicapping themselves by trying to make moment-to-moment decisions instead of precommitting themselves to "I maek roach", and even expert often not judging the big picture per se (which would be strategic), but meta-knowledge, like knowing that scout at 1:50 implies a certain build.

Not reading that, but RTS are still popular like in the hell scape that is china and korea or whatever bug country it was.
The problem with RTS is they're not casual friendly, which means only try hards really play them which isn't enough because AAA want literal billions of sales and for it to be a live service game with micro transactions and shit.
Games just need to have lower sales expectations like they used to to be able to make non slop.

You're missing the point

I've only ever enjoyed the single-player content in RTS games, like having a fun campaign where I can try out all the units and do all sorts of strategies and builds at my own pace.

Korea and they can get fucked because they say they like it yet all they make is mmo and gacha trash

Resources is the entire crux of the "why are rts hard" debate. you can't have huge epic battles when the enemy harasses you and starves your base of resources.

I think this could be solved by making resource places on the map output the resources at constant rate every 30-60 seconds or so rather than drip feed you resources for each worker available. This is kinda how C&C games really work since it takes time for the harvester to gather stuff and bring it to you before you can use them. Most of the RTS games really make you lose the game before you know it when you decide to not build workers for one microsecond and the enemy will already be way ahead of you by having more stuff than you.

if youre that good at scouting then yeah. one thing with competitive rts is early game is rigid, if you pick up on some patterns you can tell how the first minutes of the game are going to go.
but thats gay, who the fuck scouts? turtle up, tech up, build giant units and go stomp around on bases.

If you are playing COMPETITIVELY aka playing to win, in some sort of measured ranked format
You will always have to put your full attention & try your hardest to win games

Regardless of Genre

Exception being turn based games like Civ, but even those will keep you busy once you are past early game

For every hardcore 1v1 player there's probably 100 more casuals

Same
SC2 coop is fun too

Zoomers having panic attacks over performance anxiety in a fucking videogame.

Truly we're doomed as a species

rts hard because I can't macro or micro

what if we just dumbed down all the mechanics and made units not controllable

Everything is hard when ur retarded

must not help when every game is treated as some formal space where you cant say nigger kike

I usually don't like co-op stuff, because similar to team games, I don't want my fun to be dependent on other people's actions.

if it takes more than 5 seconds than it's not worth reading

make it so units are produced for free, but certain areas of the map produce units faster.
now your game also has more buildings to blow up and you still keep the "prime real estate" aspect of classic rts.

55% of under 30 males

It's literally over, this is actual end times.

I only play mp rts cooperatively.

casual

I suppose. I don’t really care, its fun.
Yes waiter, more Thermopylae bot stomps please!

100%, I'm a semen conserver but I always say I had sex so they will not come for me in the purges.

RTS is just one of those genres that doesn't have as much mass appeal as something like a platformer or open world game

gottem

they like getting immersed and normies cant immerse as the fucking overmind.

I sucked so much at rts that my mom says I trained away normal levels of anxiety.
Nothing bothers me anymore, no excuses

because you can't play rts on a console

normies aren't gonna bother my guy

Well, it claims to show and does show self-reported virginity on the raise. Do you have a plausible hypothesis for a dramatic change in self-reporting rates between virgins and non-virgins?

Why do zoomers get angry when older men fuck their women, when they're not fucking them themselves? Fuck off virgins and let real men have a chance if you're just gonna watch tik toks and e-celebs on twitch.

since they turned 18 discounts anything before turning 18

intentionally limiting it to female partners despite probably asking fags without realizing and skewing the numbers

18 and a month year old johnny could have gotten laid two months ago and his number would still count here
25 year old flaming johnny could have had ten male partners in the last week and still count because none of them were women

RTS have the turbo sweat of a fighting game, but it extends for 30 minutes. Meanwhile a fighting game match is over in 200 seconds.
An RTS match that only lasts 200 seconds might be viable, but you'd need some damn good game design.

It always annoys me when people speculate on methodology flaws rather than spending 5 minutes looking up the study and confirming it. You could have had a solid case, but now you just look like a lazy pseudo-intellectual brainlet.

Stormgate is bad because it's boring and I still love SC2. With that being said, executing the same gameplay loop does get boring for me as a casual. That's why I've been enjoying the Battle Aces betas recently. If they can get monetisation sorted out, the game is fun.

lolno, purely in numbers maybe because more people play games in general, but not when you compare it to actually popular genres
FGs are dead, people just watch the gay esports. fucking granblue versus one of the EVO games has like 1k players online you'll be sitting in queue for minutes and it's a cross platform game
SF is only relevant becase it's the face of the genre
dead genre, press S

Hardly news.
RTS is a single player genre as much as RPG is

Social media and iPhones literally destroyed humanity

he said on a social media website

People have been saying this for years

stormgate is bad because the vast majority of "people" who play RTS(or video games in general) want casual single player experiences

Immersion/emergent storytelling is certainly one thing, but I would attribute that that to middling scale and level of abstraction of the RTS genre, not to playing as Overmind/Cerebrate. People can and do get immersed in e.g. Total War or Hearts of Iron (or more hardcore wargames), the former because it tentatively starts approaching the scale where it looks like "real battles" with formations clashing, the latter because tedious paperwork and spreadsheets purports to sell the fantasy of being like real generalship. RTS is awkwardly in the middle.

I'm not gonna read your 5000 word essay.

RTS games died for the exact same reason flight sims died and fighting games are dying right now: they only catered to the most autistic 0.1% of the fans and focused on competitive multiplayer above all concerns when the #1 priority should be having a great, memorable single player campaign.

Do I have to calculate the prediction of every possible scenario of scouting?

Is CoH 3 any good? I played CoH 2 10 years ago, never got into it but I was a child back than.

Is CoH 3 any good? I played CoH 2 10 years ago, never got into it but I was a child back then.

samefag

But that doesn't sound very intellectual, you know. I thought it's like a chess party, where you calculate your moves and your enemy moves.

?
You scout what their doing, where they should be at that state of the game, whether they have enough drones at their natural, what tech buildings they have, etc

Or you just don't scout and play a normal safe build which with micro can defend basically all, all'ins other than proxied garbage

You see, there's more than one way to scout. Which one should I choose?

What comp rts offers- playing vs xpedrox to gain or lose some abstract points on some shit ladder.

What rts players actually want:

just play jerg and scout with overlords

I think shooters will never have this problem

No shooters have the problem that hacking is everywhere and extremely easy to hide these days.

he's right, 10,000 apm gameplay completely destroyed the entire genre of rts' e-sports was a mistake and i have nothing but contempt for anyone that supports it.

I actually attempted to play C&C 3: Tiberium Wars and it was just too... blurry? to understand how to actually play this game. Like, what's my modus operandi?

the only worthwhile multiplayer game is team fortress 2

I haven't played it (because) from what I've seen in the videos, it looks completely "unpolished", "unimpactful", "unresponsive", "uninspired", "flat", "meh", etc, etc. Fuck, other than pathfinding, even in a game as primitive as WarCraft 2 the moment-to-moment gameplay probably feels better on account of weighty combat sounds "*clank* *clank* *clank* AAAARGH", distinctive audio feedback to your inputs ("aye matey" "you're th--" "you're the captain!"), gritty visual style, and banging soundtrack.

millennials

real ""men""

yes because so many games have looked at AOE2 and BW's mechanics and successes and thought "yes we can build upon that" and not "how do we dumb this down to reach cod players?"

I'd say what RTS needs more is good presentation. Many older games had a solid punch to them, they felt powerful, felt real. Most modern ones look lame, sound lame, feel lame, you might as well be controlling some abstract figures on the drawn map.
Take DORF for example, nobody really knows much about its gameplay or anything really, but many people want to try it because it looks awesome.

This is what compfags want for you and your troon children.

Yes, but coh 2 is still better

Look at this man, he's having the time of his life playing his favorite game.

Zoomers left the bar extremely low I guess if 55% can't even get laid once in their life.

I like RTS campaigns but I don't like RTS when it's actually competitive with other players. Sure you can sit there learning every possible tactic and making 7200 actions per second, but that seems like a really stressful way to play a video game. Every game you're playing like that? Sending scouts, harassing, multitasking your entire base, army, the current fight, performing 15 different tasks at once with all 21 of your grouping hotkeys getting maximum usage as quickly as possible.

Of course that sounds fucking exhausting, not even other competitive games require that level of technical skill and execution. Sure you might need execution for fighting games or some FPS, but you don't have to maintain that execution for a 30+ minute game.

Yeah, RTS is too difficult when it involves competitive play. I don't blame the average casual player for saying "fuck that."

This

we don't use the word fun here chud

god I hate that artosis got popular at all, it's so annoying that he is the face of rts

Based unga

it's so annoying that he is the face of rts

I know, in my house we stan the real face of rts joy

there are people in this very thread who believe RTS games have died

Bitch please.

Good games are fun even when you're losing. That's where player expression actually matters.

Ah yes, the game from '99, older than most people here.
The true mark of a living genre

bu bu buh muh remake

stfu

I've said it before and I'll say it again, if RTS has any future it is in expanding on SC2's Coop mode

some sort of 2-4 player coop rts with some roguelike elements where after every mission you get a new perk that can radically change your playstyle would do gang-busters

is this a bronze age vs medieval expansion?

people comparing numbers today to the 90s when there are about several billions more people playing today is so retarded

indeed

If you have a good engine and setting then you could probably make bank selling campaigns as well, Nova's campaign was shorter and overall smaller in scope and production value but it's still good enough to make people fork out $15. It's been many years since I last actively played SC2 and coop but it's kind of bizarre how long it took a big studio to figure out how popular it would be to release a comp-stomp co-op mode where players gets to play around with fun abilities on a difficulty that can be toggled from braindead to meta build required.

It do be like that

See here's a problem. If you make the economy as streamlined as possible then the only thing that will matter will be micro. The economy "busywork" is much easier for you to get through the muscle memory, which means that as a slower player your ceiling in multiplayer is much higher, in a way it opens you an alternative way to win.

As for the topic I think the most important thing is that RTS is far more niche genre than people think and what has changed isn't as much the fact that the public doesn't like micro, but rather that they have different (sub?) genres of strategy games to fill the need that once upon a time was almost exclusively filled by RTS. This shift happened both on the business and consumer side.
If you pitched a 4X to investors in 2002 they'd tell you that Civ 3 isn't as big of a success as Civ 2, MoO is a dying series and more niche titles(Space Empires, then-new Galactic Civilizations etc.) are too small to count count. But you know Warcraft 3 is super popular, why don't you develop a game like Warcraft 3.
Likewise the idea of there being a turn based system or the game being completely combatless(city builder) would for whatever reason make a lot of the potential audience go away, or at least there was a perception that that would've happened I'm not sure(RPG's suffered from it as well).
Nowadays between GSGs, 4X's, city builders, whatever Total Wars are, turn and RT tactics games(the latter blend with RTS a bit ofc), MOBAs just don't leave that much space, and you can see it from what the devs are doing - for instance, Spellforce, the Warcraft 3 we have at home, had its 3rd instance in like 2016. It's a good game, but the devs of it moved on to making Titan Quest 2 while the series itself now lives through Conquest of Eo, which is a 4X.

You know, I think RTS is very streamer-able, because I love watching RTS games being played, especially CnC3. But playing them is so meh to me, it's just too hard.

When somebody makes some sort of vaguely retro rts that is designed around co-op vs bots they will make a killing

text wall

It can only propose 3 things from the header so not gonna read it-

1. Casuals are all
2. RTS is a high filter to into
3. RTS are too competitive

All of these are wrong because the most casualized RTS, Warcraft 3, was so easy to macro and micro in relative to SC1, AoE, etc, that the competition faded aqay after its release only for Starcraft 2 to come along and continue the trend while offering an even more competitive environment. Custom maps kept the games' longevity by giving casual players something to do while ladder was always a thing and facing off against a good nelf player or terran was a totally different competitive environment.

RTS is fine as a genre, but online competitive RTS needs to die in a fire.

Someone called it a game made by accountants, it's an appropriate description. As a game which aims to be the successor of SC2, it has pretty much everything SC2 has on paper. But it's far worse in every way. The art is terrible to the degree that it might have been generated by AI. The free chapter of the campaign was so bad no-one would buy the full package. I can't think of a single reason to play Stormgate instead of SC2.

It's a product of the old playerbase growing out of it and the younger generation wanting to hang out in digital clubhouses like Roblox. If you're 30+ and still playing:

RTS

Fighting Games

FPS

MOBAs

at a fairly serious level, something has gone terribly wrong. I'm not saying to quit gaming forever, but at some point you have to allocate time to your family/real life. I had enough of it in my 20s. I got hitched at 31 and took up woodworking instead and I barely have enough time for that.

online competitive RTS needs to die in a fire.

why? they're fun and we haven't had one for fucking YEARS. The last good ones were brood war and aoe2.. Why can't we have good competitive rts? why do you fags hate them so much

They've already been dead a long time you're just shit at them to boot.

God forbid we have an RTS in the modern era that has a competitive scene and isn't SC2 or AoE.

The real main thing is that the sheer number of white PC gamers who created these genre's in the 90's simply don't exist anymore

You go online to play whatever game, and its spics playing in the USA, plus mostly south americans on NA servers

at some point you have to allocate time to your family/real life.

why is it better to go all in on your career like so many faggots do despite making no money?

You could say the same thing about reading books or powerlifting.

At some point you're supposed to get insecure about what it means to be a man and forcefully shift your whole persona to compensate for feeling horror instead of comfort that you're for the most part the same person you've always been.

Over 40, married and a senior data analyst.

I'm about to turn 33 and I'm a corporate whore for a living (management consultant). I basically just travel and suck dicks like my female compatriots, but I don't get to wear cute dresses or heels. I get fucking nothing from my career other than money, but it certainly isn't satisfying like lifting, dieting, speaking to women, reading, or gaming is. From a competitive standpoint it's laughable to say that my job is anywhere near as hard as being good in starcraft. It's depressing

Oldschool RTS isnt bad, just out of fashion. Battle royales are quite the sweatfest but that doesnt deter people playing, boredom of the genre does. Newschool RTS (wargame and the like) are more relevant in gaming but still niche.

You realized something some people choose to forget in what you listed as feeling satisfying to and you. Money and a career is lubricant to life. Life is not money and a career.

I grew up playing fighters in arcades. I have a comfy job I don't hate that pays well. My free time will still see me in the arcade rather than on some sigma male grind for umpteen years to feel more secure about myself when I already have my shit squared away and taken care of.

I played RTS as a kid but I usually played the campaign or against bots which gets old fast
These days the only 'RTS' I play is Total War, I just can't be bothered investing the time required to get good at a proper RTS

If you only have hardcore and casual as options of course most people pick casual. Very few people identify themselves as hardcore anything gamers.

You can see how many people thought being competitive is important vs having a proper campaign.
Not even close.
In fact, esports ranked even lower than fucking arcade while campaign reigns supreme.

Nod propaganda

just nod and smile until he leaves

Why would you even deal with all that RTS sweat and frustration when there's barely any reward in the end and no one is even watching?

this kind of 1v1 gameplay loop is echausting and not addictive.

I mean, yeah. As someone who's never been into RTS, this makes total sense. RTS is basically just a "war game", playing pretend with little tin soldiers on the table to outmaneuver the other guy while making a biggerer betterer fortified-er base the other guy can never take. There's probably plenty of nuance to how you go about it, but ultimately I expect the crowd of people who get their jollies from outsmarting someone else at a war game and exhausting their little tin guys to be relatively small, even if it's wrapped up in a big budget video game marketed to the masses. Meanwhile I can be playing fighting games where the back-and-forth mental tug-of-war of 1v1 combat is much more tangible and easily understandable even if it's still a gamified abstraction with a bunch of weird system mechanics slapped on top. It's not just the appeal and satisfaction of virtually smashing someone's face in (which is pretty great), it's also a form of wordless communication with your fellow man; you can tell when someone is expressing themselves with simple move choices. There's a lot more layers hiding that element in an RTS.

i'm 30 and have been a drone stressed over work since joining the workforce late at 25 and spent all of my 20s in shame of wasting time every single moment I was gaming. at the end of the line, all I have is a decent job.

no wife or kids

never got that good at vidya

haven't read a book since my 20s

never developed a skill aside from cooking (to optimize meal prep for work)

i just got home, did some exercise, and vegged out with movies. i started drawing recently and even though i'm worse than a 5th grader, i'm so much happier. i wasted all these years trying to be an adult, failed miserably, when I could have just enjoyed video games or whatever hobby without your nagging little voice you tell me to keep around. i probably would have ended up in the same place anyway, college and the corporate world aren't that difficult to survive in. in terms of internal fulfillment, i'm probably at the level of a 17 year old, barely getting off the ground and realizing himself.
in the end, normal people are capable of balancing something like video games and a stable career/life simultaneously; it's not a matter of one or the other and if you think otherwise you probably have some issues to work through, like me.

retard