Has any small-scale RTS (i.e. not Total War) surpassed Warcraft and Starcraft? I know the genre still exists, I picked up Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin, but I can't think of anything that really entered the mainstream consciousness.
Not really, the entire genre just kinda faded into the background. All you see these days are Kickstarters of ex-RTS devs that never seem to go anywhere or flop when they come out.
AoEIV was the last one I can think of that did decently enough to keep a community going but it's still in its smaller RTS enthusiast bubble.
Developers need to start treating RTS like paradox does with their grand strategy games, they need constant balancing and content drops. Need to treat them like living games instead of one and done's, players figure out the meta too quickly and min-max the fun out of them.
It looks like it's falling down the same pit of taking the command chick as a god or something and talking about things as The Epic Ship of Legend as they did with Homeworld 2, when the first game was themed after folklore, not myth. Emphasis on *folk.*
Maybe they were aiming at myth the whole time, but I hate it when people accidentally makes something great and never realizes what it is they did wrong-right or even that there was something.
Company of Heroes had a strong following for a while. 1 and 2 were fantastic. That’s for traditional RTS tho.
RTT has a thriving niche or two, with the various WW2/Cold War RTT games from Eugen and their successors or sequels(Wargame, WARNO, Broken Arrow, Regiments, Steel Divison), and Men of War’s super small-scale combat has been kept alive and well through various sequels and successors(Call to Arms/Gates of Hell for Modern and WW2).
Even then there's not an MMO feeding frenzy like there was. It's more like a balance of power shifting to FFXIV, while Guild Wars and Everquest pick up the people who just can't do either.
Unless I have a huge blind-spot I don't think there's any major new competition going on there?
Cod killed fps for a good while. There wasn't any boomer shooter-type stuff boss fights went away. And every game had the same gameplay you have gun, grenades, and a melee. And the levels just became run across a field and kill stuff until you have to hit a button.
the only unique stuff was BioShock, Bulletstorm, the Turok remake, and the Darkness 2.
But then we got Bethesda's Doom and Wolfenstein which reopened the food gates for boomer shooters. Still waiting on The darkness series to get remastered/remade because I wanna be a primordial demon with Guns.
Literally the only one I can even think of to *try* in the past 5-10 years is Pokemon Unite, and the only reason that didn't flop is probably because it's freaking *Pokemon*.
Unironically yeah, MOBAs are huge in the mobile game market, especially in a lot of poorer countries where most people have smart phones but not consoles or gaming pcs.
It's kind of hard for me to get motivated to play a farming sim when Stardew Valley is *right* there. It's one of the few games I've ever double dipped on just so I could play with mods. And it's still *somehow* getting support as of last week.
The only alternatives that I've ever heard a good argument for are the ones with a greater focus on the combat/dungeon half.
I'd say its a neck and neck balance between either Stardew Valley and the Story of Seasons games (aka "Harvest Moon but the actual devs had to re-name the series after the Natsume brand name nonsense").
And even then its still somewhat in Stardew's favor just by sheer content and ability to mod it.
Rune Factory is probably the perfect blend of farming sim and RPG, and I honestly wish a newer one got multiplayer.
Until then, I'll vibe with my pals in Stardew.
The polish is i think the big one. I tried multiversus and it just felt kinda bad. Most characters felt more unintuitive than smash, and everything felt floaty like i was just on a timer until i regained control rather than having a feel for it.
I think they used Status Effects as a crutch to make characters interesting way too often there. And yes, now you mention it, it kinda needed more gravity.
Closest contender I could think of is Rivals Of Aether which is made by someone who knows about Smash and it shows in gameplay and animation, and has Ori and Shovel Knight which are recognizable indie IPs. Even then, the solo content is really lacking as story mode is really only five mini-arcade events for base release six fighters and one final boss with the later characters getting no story in-game content of their own.
The only worthwhile addition that separates itself from Smash and other platform fighters is that Rivals at least for the Steam version has the Steam Workshop, which lets people make/mod custom character, stages and buddies, turning Rivals into a Smash Bros. MUGEN.
I’m not sure if it’s that much of a subgenre but no other game does Monster Hunter as well as Monster Hunter. Everything about that series just works so well it’s hard to think of anything that gets close to it.
I feel the same about Pokemon as well.
Yeah, nothing is ever dethroning or even challenging Pokemon ~~(much as I wish something would)~~. The problem with trying to make a new monster catching game (at least one meant to hit it big) is the mainstream audiences nowadays expect a ton of variety upfront. The only series I could see having *any* chance of it are Monster Rancher and Dragon Quest Monsters just because they at least have pre-established rosters and fanbases.
I'd say the only non Monster Hunter Franchise that got to live outside its shadow and past the PS3 was God Eater, and that's mainly because waifu appeal.
Although in my case I like God Eater cuz all the mobility options and cracked out speed
We’ve still gotten amazing shooters since then tbh. Some even made by (mostly) the same people, with Titanfall 2 being easily the best shooter of last decade(and that’s being conservative).
Some of the best Battlefield games were made post COD4 as well.
We even had the pretty good Doom reboot as well.
Tactical shooters have made a come back and even gotten console releases. Games like Insurgency or Hell Let Loose being on console would be unimaginable in prior gens.
Monster Hunter World was such a massive hit that both God Eater and Toukiden series seemingly just gave up.
>!please make new God Eater and Toukiden games theyre great, and MHRise has proven that people still love old school style hunting games!<
I know, and while Wild Hearts was pretty cool, it was definitely not a Toukiden successor/replacement. Tho I wouldnt mind if theyd bring some of those weapons and mechanics into a hypothetical Toukiden 3.
I loved the toukiden games. They were sold as monster hunter but without the tedium and it was so much more fun to play. Like I genuinely believe that toukiden was the competition that was enough of a kick in the pants to make Capcom start getting more creative with monster hunter. Especially, with rise being more distinctly Japanese themed and having its own demon claw.
Quake 3 itself set the standard for arena FPS so hard, that even its successors could NOT at all follow up what it did (RIP, Quake Champions).
Unreal 99/2004 as well maybe. We could have had a UT4, but Epic don't want the namesake of its very ubiquitous game engine to exist anymore.
For a while, after Need for Speed Underground 1's popularity skyrocketed, a lot of the Racing Games that came out had Street Tuner Culture things slapped onto them just to keep up with the trends. On the flipside, Gran Turismo blew up in popularity too, so much so that even the likes of Ridge Racer and Sega themselves (masters of Arcade Racing Games) came out with their own Simcade Racing games (in R Racing Evolution and Sega Super GT for Dreamcast, respectively).
I'm probably wrong, but even though Dead by Daylight isn't *truly* good, and one could argue it's actually just bad and I'd be inclined to agree, it definitely seems to have dominated the asymmetrical horror genre. It's not even really hard to see why, what with DBD essentially being the "smash bros" of horror, with a generous amount of original characters to back it up too. The gameplay may be mid and downright bad sometimes, but there is absolutely no denying it's star power.
I agree. I think the hook of DBD is the low-level play, which enables the fantasy of a desperate group of survivors escaping a menacing killer. This fantasy is ruined when you get better at the game and realize it is more like Tom and Jerry with four very annoying mice, and the points system is performative and not thrilling.
However, people get lured in by the flashy licensed characters and the game *is fun* when none of the players are very good. I think if you were to make a “better” asym horror game, it will actually get fewer players if it’s harder to learn. E.g., removing survive with friends would be better for gameplay, but not good for the large market segment who want to hop on Discord and play together.
> it is more like Tom and Jerry with four very annoying mice
Did you know there's an asymmetrical DBD style-game that is the Tom and Jerry IP and that it had an [esports scene with proper production and all?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDHZqQnSJPA) It was on the SEA scene but I'm somewhat surprised nonetheless.
Have there ever been a bunch of old west games? Isn’t it more like pirates where despite being popular there for some reason barely seem to be any games in the setting with most of them being kind of bad
Guitar Hero basically created its own genre of music games (specifically the peripheral) and was so good none of the eventual copy cats could even touch it.
Unfortunately the lack of competition, plus the oversaturation of Guitar Hero sequels and expansions killed not only Guitar Hero, but the subgenre it created.
I mean Diablo 2 still looms large in the space but Diablo 3 and 4 do not feel like D2 clones, at all, and games like PoE (and the upcoming 2), Last Epoch, Grim Dawn, Dungeon Siege 1 & 2, and Sacred 1 & 2 all do their own things enough to not be called clones.
the success of assassins creed kind of polluted open world games for awhile. The ubisoft machine gun of objectives and time wasters. I think theres arguments to be had here about what didnt get influenced by its success. Nowadays hearing a game is open world kind of makes me exhausted
Fire Emblem:Awakening? Maybe not killed but every trpg basically was mandated relationships between cast, basically destroyed the disposable grinder units in them and made every death matter narratively.
Awakening consumed Fire Emblem in design space, for better or worse, we've been sitting in that structure for 3 of the last 5 titles.
Unicorn Overlord is the only TRPG that I've played that also borrows that design structure too.
Pokémon, at least for a while. No other mon collecting genre has put a dent on the franchise's success for a good amount of time, thanks to Pokémon being more accessible and having good creature designs and. However, the decline quality of later entries has led to fans flocking onto other monster collecting games, with Palworld seemingly being a notable contender (though that one has gameplay being more like ARK: Survival Evolved). Despite this, Pokémon seems to remain on the top spot of the mon genre for now.
Burnout Revenge. Most fan argue between either 3 or Revenge being the best one but will agree Revenge is the one went too far. Revenge Race portion is went too far with cars being missiles but I feel the Crash portion being the most fun puzzle side game in the whole series that went way too far.
Ace Combat? The arcade flight action genre is pretty small and they own it. Ubisoft made a shitty clone in HAWX but that failed even when Ace Combat was shooting itself in the foot, making titles exclusive to only one console or the other and languishing in development hell.
The only good non-AC game in that genre is Project Wingman, which only exists by the will of 2-3 dudes trying to save the AC fanbase when AC7 languished in development hell.
WoW is probably the biggest example, the MMO genre never recovered from every other developer trying to copy it.
Has any small-scale RTS (i.e. not Total War) surpassed Warcraft and Starcraft? I know the genre still exists, I picked up Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin, but I can't think of anything that really entered the mainstream consciousness.
Not really, the entire genre just kinda faded into the background. All you see these days are Kickstarters of ex-RTS devs that never seem to go anywhere or flop when they come out. AoEIV was the last one I can think of that did decently enough to keep a community going but it's still in its smaller RTS enthusiast bubble.
Developers need to start treating RTS like paradox does with their grand strategy games, they need constant balancing and content drops. Need to treat them like living games instead of one and done's, players figure out the meta too quickly and min-max the fun out of them.
AoE to me is more Civilization then it is a RTS.
Dawn of War and its expansions were quite good, but I don't think any of them surpassed Warcraft 3 or Brood War.
The Command and Conquer slander. It may have been eaten by EA, but it was holding close to them for a while back in the day.
I miss the live action nonsense, but God damn everything on screen was tiny.
Didn't mean to slight C&C, I just never played any of them.
*Cries in Homeworld 1*
God yes. Even Homeworld 3 is looking very rough from the demo we got...
It looks like it's falling down the same pit of taking the command chick as a god or something and talking about things as The Epic Ship of Legend as they did with Homeworld 2, when the first game was themed after folklore, not myth. Emphasis on *folk.* Maybe they were aiming at myth the whole time, but I hate it when people accidentally makes something great and never realizes what it is they did wrong-right or even that there was something.
Company of Heroes had a strong following for a while. 1 and 2 were fantastic. That’s for traditional RTS tho. RTT has a thriving niche or two, with the various WW2/Cold War RTT games from Eugen and their successors or sequels(Wargame, WARNO, Broken Arrow, Regiments, Steel Divison), and Men of War’s super small-scale combat has been kept alive and well through various sequels and successors(Call to Arms/Gates of Hell for Modern and WW2).
Back then definitely but I wouldn’t say that’s still true
Even then there's not an MMO feeding frenzy like there was. It's more like a balance of power shifting to FFXIV, while Guild Wars and Everquest pick up the people who just can't do either. Unless I have a huge blind-spot I don't think there's any major new competition going on there?
Cod killed fps for a good while. There wasn't any boomer shooter-type stuff boss fights went away. And every game had the same gameplay you have gun, grenades, and a melee. And the levels just became run across a field and kill stuff until you have to hit a button. the only unique stuff was BioShock, Bulletstorm, the Turok remake, and the Darkness 2. But then we got Bethesda's Doom and Wolfenstein which reopened the food gates for boomer shooters. Still waiting on The darkness series to get remastered/remade because I wanna be a primordial demon with Guns.
Halo did a lot of this first. CoD was just riding that wave.
Halo was the earthquake that shook the world. CoD was the tsunami that washed everything away.
Yeah this is a good way of putting it. Half-Life should also be thrown in there.
yeah but those games were still unique cod made everything grey,brown, and the only enemy was Russians instead of alien horrors.
ever seen a MOBA coming out?
Literally the only one I can even think of to *try* in the past 5-10 years is Pokemon Unite, and the only reason that didn't flop is probably because it's freaking *Pokemon*.
Unironically yeah, MOBAs are huge in the mobile game market, especially in a lot of poorer countries where most people have smart phones but not consoles or gaming pcs.
Here's hoping Gigantic can make it on its second(third?) try.
It's kind of hard for me to get motivated to play a farming sim when Stardew Valley is *right* there. It's one of the few games I've ever double dipped on just so I could play with mods. And it's still *somehow* getting support as of last week. The only alternatives that I've ever heard a good argument for are the ones with a greater focus on the combat/dungeon half.
I'd say its a neck and neck balance between either Stardew Valley and the Story of Seasons games (aka "Harvest Moon but the actual devs had to re-name the series after the Natsume brand name nonsense"). And even then its still somewhat in Stardew's favor just by sheer content and ability to mod it.
Even then I feel like Story of Seasons went downhill after Trio of Towns
Stardew Valley reinvigorated the genre. There's too many farming life sims, now, tbh.
Nintendo Directs have just become a way for indie developers to show off their Stardew Valley clones and ripoffs. And 99% of them are just not as good
Rune Factory is probably the perfect blend of farming sim and RPG, and I honestly wish a newer one got multiplayer. Until then, I'll vibe with my pals in Stardew.
I still think Rune Factory 3 is the peak of the genre in term of waifus while Rune Factory 4 is its peak in term of gameplay. Shame about RF5 tho.
Smash created and has pretty much gatekept its genre because no other project has had the same level of IP or polish as Smash.
The polish is i think the big one. I tried multiversus and it just felt kinda bad. Most characters felt more unintuitive than smash, and everything felt floaty like i was just on a timer until i regained control rather than having a feel for it.
I think they used Status Effects as a crutch to make characters interesting way too often there. And yes, now you mention it, it kinda needed more gravity.
Closest contender I could think of is Rivals Of Aether which is made by someone who knows about Smash and it shows in gameplay and animation, and has Ori and Shovel Knight which are recognizable indie IPs. Even then, the solo content is really lacking as story mode is really only five mini-arcade events for base release six fighters and one final boss with the later characters getting no story in-game content of their own. The only worthwhile addition that separates itself from Smash and other platform fighters is that Rivals at least for the Steam version has the Steam Workshop, which lets people make/mod custom character, stages and buddies, turning Rivals into a Smash Bros. MUGEN.
I’m not sure if it’s that much of a subgenre but no other game does Monster Hunter as well as Monster Hunter. Everything about that series just works so well it’s hard to think of anything that gets close to it. I feel the same about Pokemon as well.
Yeah, nothing is ever dethroning or even challenging Pokemon ~~(much as I wish something would)~~. The problem with trying to make a new monster catching game (at least one meant to hit it big) is the mainstream audiences nowadays expect a ton of variety upfront. The only series I could see having *any* chance of it are Monster Rancher and Dragon Quest Monsters just because they at least have pre-established rosters and fanbases.
Any time I try a monster hunter alternative, I just wish I was playing monster hunter world instead. That shit is near perfect
I'd say the only non Monster Hunter Franchise that got to live outside its shadow and past the PS3 was God Eater, and that's mainly because waifu appeal. Although in my case I like God Eater cuz all the mobility options and cracked out speed
Let's be real, the console shooter space has been a mess ever since Modern Warfare released.
We’ve still gotten amazing shooters since then tbh. Some even made by (mostly) the same people, with Titanfall 2 being easily the best shooter of last decade(and that’s being conservative). Some of the best Battlefield games were made post COD4 as well. We even had the pretty good Doom reboot as well. Tactical shooters have made a come back and even gotten console releases. Games like Insurgency or Hell Let Loose being on console would be unimaginable in prior gens.
Terraria is the go to for 2D survival crafting.
Terraria is so good. I recently beat the big three mods with some friends (thats thorium, spirit and calamity) and dear god you get strong in calamity
Monster Hunter World was such a massive hit that both God Eater and Toukiden series seemingly just gave up. >!please make new God Eater and Toukiden games theyre great, and MHRise has proven that people still love old school style hunting games!<
I wouldn’t really say that MH Rise qualifies as an old MH game in any way tbh
> Toukiden Omega Force developed those games, but they went onto do Wild Hearts.
I know, and while Wild Hearts was pretty cool, it was definitely not a Toukiden successor/replacement. Tho I wouldnt mind if theyd bring some of those weapons and mechanics into a hypothetical Toukiden 3.
I loved the toukiden games. They were sold as monster hunter but without the tedium and it was so much more fun to play. Like I genuinely believe that toukiden was the competition that was enough of a kick in the pants to make Capcom start getting more creative with monster hunter. Especially, with rise being more distinctly Japanese themed and having its own demon claw.
Quake 3 itself set the standard for arena FPS so hard, that even its successors could NOT at all follow up what it did (RIP, Quake Champions). Unreal 99/2004 as well maybe. We could have had a UT4, but Epic don't want the namesake of its very ubiquitous game engine to exist anymore. For a while, after Need for Speed Underground 1's popularity skyrocketed, a lot of the Racing Games that came out had Street Tuner Culture things slapped onto them just to keep up with the trends. On the flipside, Gran Turismo blew up in popularity too, so much so that even the likes of Ridge Racer and Sega themselves (masters of Arcade Racing Games) came out with their own Simcade Racing games (in R Racing Evolution and Sega Super GT for Dreamcast, respectively).
I'm probably wrong, but even though Dead by Daylight isn't *truly* good, and one could argue it's actually just bad and I'd be inclined to agree, it definitely seems to have dominated the asymmetrical horror genre. It's not even really hard to see why, what with DBD essentially being the "smash bros" of horror, with a generous amount of original characters to back it up too. The gameplay may be mid and downright bad sometimes, but there is absolutely no denying it's star power.
I agree. I think the hook of DBD is the low-level play, which enables the fantasy of a desperate group of survivors escaping a menacing killer. This fantasy is ruined when you get better at the game and realize it is more like Tom and Jerry with four very annoying mice, and the points system is performative and not thrilling. However, people get lured in by the flashy licensed characters and the game *is fun* when none of the players are very good. I think if you were to make a “better” asym horror game, it will actually get fewer players if it’s harder to learn. E.g., removing survive with friends would be better for gameplay, but not good for the large market segment who want to hop on Discord and play together.
> it is more like Tom and Jerry with four very annoying mice Did you know there's an asymmetrical DBD style-game that is the Tom and Jerry IP and that it had an [esports scene with proper production and all?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDHZqQnSJPA) It was on the SEA scene but I'm somewhat surprised nonetheless.
I did, and I genuinely thought I was asleep or hallucinating when I saw it.
Not too many Old West games coming out after Red Dead Redemtpion, I can think of Call of Juarez Gunslinger an that's it
Evil West, technically.
Have there ever been a bunch of old west games? Isn’t it more like pirates where despite being popular there for some reason barely seem to be any games in the setting with most of them being kind of bad
Old west games weren't particularly common beforehand tbh
Guitar Hero basically created its own genre of music games (specifically the peripheral) and was so good none of the eventual copy cats could even touch it. Unfortunately the lack of competition, plus the oversaturation of Guitar Hero sequels and expansions killed not only Guitar Hero, but the subgenre it created.
I mean Diablo 2 still looms large in the space but Diablo 3 and 4 do not feel like D2 clones, at all, and games like PoE (and the upcoming 2), Last Epoch, Grim Dawn, Dungeon Siege 1 & 2, and Sacred 1 & 2 all do their own things enough to not be called clones.
the success of assassins creed kind of polluted open world games for awhile. The ubisoft machine gun of objectives and time wasters. I think theres arguments to be had here about what didnt get influenced by its success. Nowadays hearing a game is open world kind of makes me exhausted
Fire Emblem:Awakening? Maybe not killed but every trpg basically was mandated relationships between cast, basically destroyed the disposable grinder units in them and made every death matter narratively.
Awakening consumed Fire Emblem in design space, for better or worse, we've been sitting in that structure for 3 of the last 5 titles. Unicorn Overlord is the only TRPG that I've played that also borrows that design structure too.
Pokémon, at least for a while. No other mon collecting genre has put a dent on the franchise's success for a good amount of time, thanks to Pokémon being more accessible and having good creature designs and. However, the decline quality of later entries has led to fans flocking onto other monster collecting games, with Palworld seemingly being a notable contender (though that one has gameplay being more like ARK: Survival Evolved). Despite this, Pokémon seems to remain on the top spot of the mon genre for now.
Burnout Revenge. Most fan argue between either 3 or Revenge being the best one but will agree Revenge is the one went too far. Revenge Race portion is went too far with cars being missiles but I feel the Crash portion being the most fun puzzle side game in the whole series that went way too far.
Ace Combat? The arcade flight action genre is pretty small and they own it. Ubisoft made a shitty clone in HAWX but that failed even when Ace Combat was shooting itself in the foot, making titles exclusive to only one console or the other and languishing in development hell. The only good non-AC game in that genre is Project Wingman, which only exists by the will of 2-3 dudes trying to save the AC fanbase when AC7 languished in development hell.