Command and conquer? Civilization? Warcraft? StarCraft? These were all massively popular series, with widespread appeal and high sales.

>>2336283
>2
yeah
>1
naeh

>>2336283
No no it's far worse than that. The people who are idiots or just don't care don't play strategy games, they play FPS and TPS games, where shooting and blowing things up is far easier and far more direct. The idiots who do play them pretend they aren't idiots, they pretend they're pseudo intellectuals who are smarter because they play hoi4, made a basic bitch division layout and clicked +1 on the military factory button, and then said 'Im as smart as a REAL general!'. I like strategy games, I like wargame style strategy games, but the amount of people I encounter who think they're smart just because they figured out which part of the jigsaw puzzle needs what piece is astoundingly high

talented devs stopped making strategy games that appealed to normal people wanting to play out a power fantasy with cool units and an entertaining campaign/story, and instead targeted all of their efforts toward making games for cranky autists who will never be pried away from their StarCraft and AoE2 fixations no matter what

>>2336322
this is retarded and you are retarded. if anything, starcraft and aoe represent the shallowest and most mainstream of all the rts demographic. you only see proper autism-level creativity and depth from more niche titles that aren't aping one of the majors for the market accessibility

>>2336283
>devs can't understand the average joe
They understand the average joe. Which is why we have tower defence, auto battlers, moba and total war warhammer.

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>>2336283
>picrel

>>2336304
the arbiter of intelligence here

>>2336283
>Strategy games aren't popular because people are idiots
I disagree. Menace just released and is extremely easy.
Go to /v/ and every thread is filled with retards whining about the AI cheating, running out of ammo, difficulty, etc

You are mostly on /vst/ so your perception is warped.

>>2336283
>Strategy games aren't popular because people are idiots.
People are not idiots they just have mental capacities tied elsewhere in life and strategy games require mental capacities that are not useful or natural in real life.
>They're unpopular because devs can't understand the average joe.
First you need to define who the "average joe" is. Second, I think we are way past the trap of "making games to a wider audience" and thinking it will sell better.

>1. If your tutorial is dogshit or takes hours, that's on the devs.
With this I 200% agree! Making effective tutorials is a difficult thing already. And sadly most development does not leave time for making tutorials that are fitting to the game, they are mostly an afterthought.

>I need to understand the pros and cons of every decision I make.
This is usually almost impossible in reality because you need a very deep level of game knowledge that can only be accumulated over several playthroughts. The amount of potential decisions and their outcomes can be staggeringly huge. Less experienced players would be mentally overloaded and their brains exploded from that much information and likely quit learning that needs long time and smaller steps.

>2. If you don't make your AI smart and rely on unfair resources or other stat increases for difficulty. The player either fights a worthless idiot or must play unfair catchup until the enemy is a worthless idiot. Once I'm notably smarter than the AI, no difficulty level is fun anymore.

>The counter argument to both of these is, we only have so many resources to put into the games development but in the age of updates that's not an excuse anymore.

This has been debunked already in other ways beside what you said in your counter arguments

1) Strategy games are a test of game knowledge and (hopefully) wits. The fact that you need to "use your smarts" to defeat a "Materially Stronger" opponent is EXACTLY what the experience is supposed to be. You are supposed to win because you are smarter, you get rewarded for being smarter, that is the point of a game which is about being smarter! This is basic common sense, what is so hard to understand about this?

(cont)

>>2336283
>>2336529
(cont)

2) If your opponent is also playing effectively (like other humans) the they will rarely make mistakes for you to capitalize on, this will lead to repeated games becoming samey, stale and the outcomes super predictable. The more experienced you are the more predictable the outcome which means you will easily realize halfway into a game that you have already lost and you just quit. Even worse, then you can start seeing that the RNG of the game that you can’t control is the reason you lost. This would also be true in reverse. Even if the AI doesn’t quit even after it is defeated, you will realize you were not much smarter you were simply lucky with RNG to win. And victories like that will feel hollow.

Then you get what happens in Civ6 competitive Multiplayer where entire teams concede multiple games in a row on turn 10 just because of their terrible starting location instead of playing the game out. Which then naturally means the game needs to make RNG less punishing which will THEN lead back to games being more samey, more stale and outcomes more predictable once again.

3) Games are there to be fun and relaxing. You play at time when you are tired and just want to not think about all the difficult shit in life, having an opponent that can competitively outthink you is NOT a fun and relaxing experience, it needs someone to be in an energized, clear headed, fresh and competitive mindset to enjoy a challenging experience like that and people need that energy for dealing with real life shit. But AI are not constrained by such limitations so most of the time AI would dominate human players.

(cont)

>>2336283
>>2336531
(cont)

4) We make mistakes we are human, players often make honest mistakes and the stronger the opponent the less forgiving every mistake is. It is very often about defeating ourselves by making small multiple mistakes over time that we do not realize until it is too late. That how we still loose even if the opponent is easy. And there are few worse feelings than that so we need ways to realize, learn, adjust and have a chance to come back or we will simply loose motivation and quit.

5) “Why not just play Multiplayer?” While obviously Multiplayer has its own problems and logistical limits of finding people to play with it is none the less another a valid argument.

Bro posted a 2,000 word essay
Be succinct

>>2336534
It is 780 words with OP's quotes included

>>2336283
>They're unpopular because devs can't understand the average joe.
Stopped reading there. Average Joe doesnt play strategy games, he plays shooters and other dopamine rush games. You dont understand anything.

>>2336283
Onboarding in RTS is famously terrible. It's a known problem.
Part of it is that in a game like stellaris, the devs don't understand what the game is, what the gameplay is supposed to be or why people like it and explaining your choices instead of mystifying them behind obscurative backend calculations would risk just shattering the illusion that what people thought was meaningful gameplay was actually nonsense.

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>>2336283
Tutorials have absolutely 0 impact on RTS popularity. Zero. AI is also completely irrelevant and matters only to the most rabid autistic retards.
People have a mental image of korean starcraft pros with machinegun fingers and autistic micro consisting of running your army back and forth like a mad retard. People don't want that, it's anthrax for the majority of gaymers. A lot more people enjoy watching this happen far more than doing it.
This thesis is supported by literal trillions of gaymers who keep saying they enjoy building cities in age of empires 2, surrounding them with walls, towers and castles, building up their army, maxing out and A-moving into the enemy, then watching your guys slaughter the enemy and burn down their city.
What is the first rule of competitive multiplayer RTS? "Don't watch your guys fight, use that time to macro in base".
And then the vast majority stay with skirmish against AI once they discover real multiplayer has nothing to do with what people enjoy about RTS games

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>>2336724
>AI is also completely irrelevant and matters only to the most rabid autistic retards.
>And then the vast majority stay with skirmish against AI once they discover real multiplayer has nothing to do with what people enjoy about RTS games

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>>2336773
>he thinks citybuilders want the enemy AI to be competent and difficult

>>2336283
Yeah, devs kind of expect you to know what you're doing and this works because most games are just copy-pasted, and the old classics that taught you how to play keep getting remastered.
Players often say that it's boring and lazy, but if they get a game that plays unlike anything they've seen before, they get irritated because they have to sit their asses down and learn it first.

>>2336283

1.Making a tutorial, post release, like you seem to be suggesting seems kinda dumb. Development time spent there will be largely wasted since most players won't go back to a tutorial and you'll get less newbies than during the launch window.

2. Imo most strategy games these days have pretty good ai. At level resources they usually challenge a new player. And overcoming an unbalanced level of units or whatever coming at you is fun for me anyway. Playing against an Ai that does or approaches perfect play isn't really fun.

I'd like Ai that has more variation in behavior, but doing this without just having it make mistakes is hard so...

>>2336414
What is this reading comprehension? Are you american? You're arguing a completely different point. Utterly gormless response. Regardless, autists are more than happy to fixate on shallow slop, look no further than shite like Sonic and Pokemon.

>>2336283
>Strategy games aren't popular because people are idiots
Yes, correct.

>>2336533
>No bro, they can 't possibly make the AI any better!
>We have to have dogshit AI that can barely play the game, bro!!!
>Stop asking, bro! Please, bro!!!

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Strategy game are popular enough.
but REAL TIME strategy is an undead genre because they pursue self-destructive goals.

They want short multiplayer match to cater to have high turn over, and so make matches where speed & production matter more than tactics.
They want game "easy to balance" to get into eSport bullshit, so the map and units are mirrored, simplistic, no-physics, no-AI and requires a lot of micromanagement to keep units from dying in retarded way.
SP RTS games have less problems with that micromanagement, but in MP games it prevents any complex tactics.

>>2336283
>2
>AI smart
I believe the problem is deeper than that.
Your "AI" almost certainly refer to the AI as a commander. Even if they don't need to be equal to a player, they need to bait players into tactics to fight them.
Still,
What IMO we really need are smart troops that do not require constant babysitting and can perform complex orders without having to pause the game and control each of them individually.

>>2336531
>2)
NTA, while I agree that AIs need to "make mistake" it's more a question of game design.
Making it impossible to come with a "sure win" META, so that even if your enemy outthink you, his plans cannot be flawless.
>RNG bad
Actually that should be encouraged into regular events.
Making battles actually interesting and forcing you to improvise, to remake a plan which is exactly the fun in those game.
We are NOT talking about "lol RNG you lose". We are talking of event that change you can survive, and if you are smart you can still exploit it differently.

>5) “Why not just play Multiplayer?”
>just
MP by nature is pushing for "fair" & symmetrical war (lol). And your human opponent will be playing for their fun, not yours.
While none should expect the enemies to cooperate in your dream engagement, AI don't mind acting a role to give you a themed challenge.
Thus MP cannot replaceable SP based gameplay (or even MP PvE).

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>>2338543
Speaking of dumb AI, here's the second part of >>2340144.

I raged over TW Shogun when I realized the AI do not upgrade their castles and magically spawn armies. Making any single player game a chore, MP difficult to organize because it's typically long games, and preventing PvE because the AI are not fun to fight together.
...also had the same observation with Supreme Commander.

>>2340144
>NTA, while I agree that AIs need to "make mistake" it's more a question of game design.
>Making it impossible to come with a "sure win" META, so that even if your enemy outthink you, his plans cannot be flawless.

No plan is ever flawless. But if you are decent enough at the game you can usually just play defensively. So then what happens? You can play defensively and turn the game into a chore a long drawn out boring grindfest which you will never win but you make very hard and time consuming on the opponent to beat you. An AI player that is not smarter than a human but has unlimited "free time" to play the game and likely also does not get bored and tired of repeating the same chore moves over and over will very likely default to this choice and never quit unless pre-programmed to "give up" at certain conditions.

So the human player will always win but winning will be an exceedingly long and boring process and most likely people will not bother finishing games just quite mid game knowing that the AI has no comeback options anymore.

By far the biggest problem I see with every single one these threads that call for "AI to be better" completely misses the player as human being. These threads treat players like they are all exclusively pro level hardcore gamers who have unlimited free time and energy and their idea of fun is to contest a well programmed AI a so called "strategy" game. When the vast majority of players only in for a reasonably short funtime where they can create a fun build/plan after seeing their situation and execute it and win and simply quit halfway if it doesn't work.

>>2336283
>Strategy games aren't popular because people are idiots
Are you implying that strategy games are for smart people?
lmao

>>2341137
Technically those statements aren't mutually exclusive. Like, a lot of stupid people believe that you must be really smart to be any good at chess and never bother trying to play it. Strategy games are generally considered to be complicated, difficult and hard to learn by the uninitiated.

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>>2341107
>But if you are decent enough at the game you can usually just play defensively. So then what happens?
Current RTS design have always made this impossible. They want short matches.
So they are balanced to become more and more unstable as time goes on.
The lazy way is to make late-game offense superior to late-game defense.
The smarter way is to go sideway, you can defend, but not against everything, and not everywhere simultaneously.

>By far the biggest problem I see with every single one these threads that call for "AI to be better" completely misses the player as human being
Those "Better AI" calls aren't about making the AI outsmart players no matter what.
It's about making AI that behave like these "flawed human being". Creating armies that look cool, try your defense, overplay its hands thinking (You) don't learn, accidentally open a flaw, panic when it is exploited, desperately send something to distract you, while it overprepare only against the weapon you used most...and so on.

And that's the difficulty.
Not making an AI that has a perfect economy, always chose the most efficient production order, instantly identify from a 1second scout your defense and calculate the exact army and DPS it needs, micromanaging 200 units simultaneously to kill first the your most important units...
Those are relatively easy (and obviously unfun).

The mistake is making "strategy game" as simply enigma that has to be solved.

>>2340150
The AI famously upgrades their castles, thats why when you capture their land you end up in a food deficit

>>2342240
I agree. What I want from Ai is not for it to play the best move or optimal or abuse rules but to have personality. Like on old MoO 1 where Ai would behave differently based on its race(and their personality), xenophobic race would sperg sometime making them unpredictable and unreliable neighbour, bullrathi would sometimes send troop transport just to take over your border colony, some races would allow to be pushed, other would start early skirmishing and aggressively probe your borders, etc

>>2336283
This is very true, at least for me, every strategy game that has filtered me has had shit tutorials and multiple hour long YouTube tutorials to learn the game. The only ones I've gotten into have had good tutorials and good ai to play against.

Another issue is a lot of games add useless bloat and unnecessary mechanics that only exist to make newer players even more confused. More mechanics doesn't really add more strategic depth most the time.

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>>2336283
>They're unpopular because the gaming population is massively more brown than during the peak of RTS popularity.
Strategy is the whitest game genre. Its success is a direct measurement of mankind's health.

>>2336283
>every other game genre player base when talking about their games
Wow, this is nice, so much fun, what a piece of art! So much attention to detail as well, these people are amazing
>/vst/ players when talking about their games
What a piece of utter shit, who coded this. Nothing works, units and mechanics are broken, this is not fun, how come nobody burned this studio to ashes
>1k hours on steam

>>2342279
Is that linked to difficulty setting or something? Or fixed in later game I didn't remember?
Because I remember Shogun 2 not upgrading past the first level on standard difficulty.

>>2336298
when were they popular? when people were smarter. now people are dumber and so now strategy games are less popular.

>>2336283
i agree with 1. but 2. is stupid, if you want an evenly matched opponent just fight a human.

>>2336283
>if I am just building things I don't understand, I'm not having fun whether I'm winning or losing.
But I enjoy that!
>I need to understand the pros and cons of every decision I make.
I don't care about that
>The counter argument to both of these is, we only have so many resources to put into the games development but in the age of updates that's not an excuse anymore.
Did man-hours suddenly become free or something?

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>>2336283
I've lost count of the amount of times I've played a new strategy/citybuilder game and the tutorial has felt like that Game Helpin' Squad video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Gy9hJauXns
Then when you sink a few hours into it you realise it's actually deceptively easy but the devs are just retards who can't explain shit to save their lives. Often with incorrect tooltips. Just find a fan wiki and that will usually clear up most of the basics for you with the bonus that if you really want to get autistic and understand what's happening under the hood somebody has certainly decoded it for you.

>>2336283
>1. If your tutorial is dogshit or takes hours, that's on the devs. Player's shouldn't rely on online video essays to enjoy the product they purchased. if I am just building things I don't understand, I'm not having fun whether I'm winning or losing. I need to understand the pros and cons of every decision I make.
That'll take hours.
>If you don't make your AI smart and rely on unfair resources or other stat increases for difficulty. The player either fights a worthless idiot or must play unfair catchup until the enemy is a worthless idiot. Once I'm notably smarter than the AI, no difficulty level is fun anymore.
Agreed. Play Age of Empires 2.

>>2342727
>Strategy is the whitest game genre.
that would mean the Slavs are the whitest lmao

>>2348262
Don’t go look at a map of where the Aryan homeland was.

>>2344594
>Play Age of Empires 2.
>play brown loving bugged game
No.

>No dude I really want to play strategy games but I can't be bothered to put any amount of effort or brainpower into learning the game!
Then you don't want to play strategy games. Go play animal crossing or some shit

>>2348262
that's because they are. True slavs, not r*ssian-mongolian-chinese bastards

The issue is that RTS games have no strategy in them, its all about APM, micro, and macro, and optimized build orders

And any competitive game is going to be stressful to play
Plus its a white persons game, not popular in china/india/africa/whatever

>>2336283
>unfair resources
you realize that every game relies on that.
Shooter throws hordes of enemies at you and rpg bosses have 20x times the health and immunity to all good status effects.

AI has very little to do with how popular a game/genre is.
You are right about 1.) though.
If you want to draw in new players you shouldn't rely on veterans.
And you shouldn't rely on people throwing themself into the cold water being MP.
Control is really the main problem of RTS, it prevented the genre to be accessible on consoles and it makes the game very try hard if it rewards high apm.

>>2342240
>realistic AI is unrealistic
sounds like fanfiction.
What is considered realistic AI? Deepmind playing Starcraft?

The problem with AI is that it is fact cheating.
It can react to an enemy popping up on the minimap for a nanosecond and micro 20 units at the same time.

>Those "Better AI" calls aren't about making the AI outsmart players no matter what.
It's about making AI that behave like these "flawed human being"
exactly

>>2341107
>You can play defensively and turn the game into a chore a long drawn out boring grindfest
every pro player will tell you that current AI is much much stronger in endgame, but easily gets crippled by early aggression

>>2353350
>RTS games have no strategy in them, they just have tactics, strategy, and openings that let you think about the midgame while you're still in the early game
well said my friend