>80% of RTS players only play singleplayer>companies are still focusing on competitive multiplayerWhy? (for both points)
>>2392986RTS multiplayer is too much of a time sink for most non-autists to want to bother with. Devs ignore the 80% of fans in the hopes of making up for that lost revenue with a BroodWar-style runaway esports phenomenon.
1) Customers != Players2) Developers != GamersRTS is a male genre. The current industry is not male.
>>2392986A player who only cares about single player will buy your game, and that's it. Multiplayer people are much easier to string along with cosmetics and other microtransactions.
>>2392986Stuff like TW, AoM, and Stronghold are terrible at competitive multiplayer. AoE II is great at multiplayer but also nice for singleplayer and they're still making single player focused DLCs.I suppose competitive events are a good way to promote game and create a sense of community.
>>2392986Devs have this romantic ambition to make a Starcraft killer (and some are just grifters). Publishers and investors take a gamble for potential profits. Compfags eat up the hype. But compfags don't stick around unless the game is several magnitudes better than older games, devs struggle to keep up with expectations and fail to maintain balance, investors bail out.
>>2392986>80% of RTS players only play singleplayerwatching your guys fight is why people like RTS and watching your guys fight is a noob thing to do in multiplayer. Therefore the vast majority of RTS players play single player so they can watch their dudes fight and have fun doing it>companies are still focusing on competitive multiplayerbecause jews want money and they want all of the money, not just some of the money. The only way to get all of the money in RTS is to become a starcraft-tier esports hit and global phenomenon where goys get excited about ugly and obese people "performing" in a game and sell merchandise.So in order to get all of the money the jews in control of the industry keep funding only the multiplayer-focused esports-aspiring titles. And they keep flopping one after another because it's impossible to achieve starcraft tier popularity backwards.First you have to make a cool single player game with cool factions to make people even think about extending their play time and engagement into competitive multiplayer.A game like league of legends or other MOBAs are boring as single player games, they rely on the unpredictability and competitive PvP features, these are the core fun-creating aspects of the genre.For RTS, these features are watching your dudes fight and slaughter each other, then blow up and destroy buildings. It's an inherently single player-coded genre and the jews keep trying to skip that first step and cross the finish line of giga esports money without actually putting in any effort
>>2392986>companies are still focusing on competitive multiplayerNo you dumbass liar, companies are not focusing on ANYTHING regarding RTS anymore. In case you are genuinely this stupid and not baiting you just failed to notice that RTS is a dead genre. The only thing that is keeping the last few surviving RTS game on life support is the multiplayer which companies reluctantly keep alive in order avoid a class action lawsuit for "killing a game" that too many of people paid for at once point.
>>2392986>Why?corpos don't care about the gamers.corpos' investors want online DRM and "games as a service". also potential e-sports sponsorship.
>>2393276>companies reluctantly keep alive in order avoid a class action lawsuit for "killing a game" that too many of people paid for at once point.potential lawsuits never stopped them.
The 20% of people who play multiplayer are the ones who keep the game going for years and years. A single player campaign only player will usually only play the game very actively one time, then will infrequently return to it, and his playing the game won't generate any interest in it for anyone else. Online players, though, actively promote interest in the game and attract new people to it. They also are more likely to make purchases for new DLC than SP players.
>>2393499This is false. Compfags rarely pick up new games, rarely end up playing new games very long, keep playing very old games forever, don't exactly attract new players and actually deter newbies who wouldn't want to play against old veterans. Very few games end up having an active online community and dead multiplayer stays dead forever, especially multiplayer-only live-service shit.Singleplayer games can be picked up on launch, on sale or decades later and can be played just fine, you don't have to worry whether the purchase has an expiration date. Campaignfags buy more games and build backlogs not worrying about player numbers and tribalism and play them whenever they want. Multiple games can launch at the same time and players can pick and choose whatever they want, not just what's currently popular and alive. There's variety and competition because there's less risk for the devs who can work with smaller budgets and there are far more singleplayer games overall.
>>2393499Only story, themes and characters actually push sales for games. When I say story I don't even mean the details or who did what, I mean the tiny story of being a badass StarCraft Alien overlord or grey alien or rebellious space trucker or whatever. The fantasy in gameplay. What kind of themes exist in They are Billions or Grey goo? What sort of fantasy and story is played out by engaging with the game? >>2393276>rts is a dead genre Its basically the only game genre where developers completely failed fulfilling a corner stone aspect of the game style, which is to have fun and replayable SP campaigns. It'd be like roller coaster tycoon games failing to have a free build mode.
>>2393524>This is false.lol, we literally see exactly what I am talking about with starcraft and AoE2. These games came out before a huge chunk of their current players were even born. The only reason they even heard about the game or picked it up is because of the multiplayer scene keeping it alive and raising awareness of it.
>>2393694Having established races, strong aesthetics, lots of campaigns and scenarios goes a long way in building up that playerbase. It was fun to play and fun to watch. Many of the player modes essentially just lets you plow giant armies into each other. You get none of that with the minimalist, slim, perfect control sc2 clones that are the entire modern rts effort. They became flatter and gayer as time went on, and brood war and aoe2 are genuinely the best things in genre ever made
>>2393694Most players had no idea these games were still played online with such autistic devotion, or cared for that aspect when buying. But since these are some of the most important pieces of gaming history and flagship products of major companies it's hard not to be aware of them.
>>2392986Because multiplayer generates hype and sales. People don't really watch singleplayer gameplay. It's a more private affair. Singleplayer focus also makes your game forgettable, as players exhaust the content. The game conversation ends in singleplayer pretty quickly. But a good RTS game hinges on the developer being good at making games. And so far, it's not been a good time. Most RTS games I notice fail to have any retention.
>>2392986RTS ai is really fucking difficult to create. everything else the game needs is relatively easy work for developers.
the casual audience is too fickle, its not worth it to develop the game that they want when its so much cheaper to create the game that the hardcore players want
>>2396184This is the opposite of truth. Casuals are easily persuaded, just make the game look cool and they'll buy it on impulse, bundled with five more. Hardcores are demanding, discerning and overall difficult to please - if you can't give them a vidya that's twice as good as everything they played before, they'll pirate at best.
>>2392986>80% of RTS players only play singleplayer, why?Because competitive multiplayer isn't for everyone and very few are interested in playing after 2 losses>Companies are still focusing on competitive multiplayer, why?Because competitive multiplayer is QA testing, it's free and of much higher quality that also carries over to the single player experienceIf you want single player there are city builders, automation, god games and colony sims for you. Hope this helps
What singleplayer rts should I get if I recently got into AoE4 and enjoy it a lot? I don't play online just vs the cpu.
>>2402536I enjoyed Age of Darkness
>>2402536Few RTSes are similar to AoE and most are old as shit. I tried Circle Empires 2 demo and wasn't into it, and also wishlisted The Fertile Crescent a long time ago.
>>2402536I liked diplomacy is not an option!
>>2393536>It'd be like roller coaster tycoon games failing to have a free build mode.Didn't the original Roller Coaster Tycoon ship without a "build whatever" map? The first one of those was "build your own six flags park" in RCT2
>>2392986Once you have the player factions and networking implemented your game is ready to release for pvp. To add good singleplayer experience you need special mechanics and units, voice acting, writing, cut scenes, good enemy AI and whatever else. For big companies that can afford to stay in development for longer it's still good to have an active competitive scene because it keeps the community alive and have people talk about the game for longer.
