The Era of "Accessible" Games

[Mitoe]

It seems to me that many games nowadays are designed with accessibility to the casual player in mind.

That doesn't necessarily mean that the games are always easy, only that they don't require a lot of time investment to be fun to the new or casual user. Look at battle royale games now; you have to learn and practice a lot if you want to be really good, but it's very easy to have fun even as a noob.

For the RTS genre, however, this is not the case. I think it is very difficult to have an RTS that appeals to both casual and competitive players alike. You have to learn way more and practice way more if you want to reach an acceptable level of play where you're no longer complete trash.


With AoE4 coming up, will it be successful among new RTS players or modern casual gamers? I'm not sure that it will. I don't really see this game appealing to both casual players and competitive players, assuming that it follows the common RTS tropes: dropsites / heavy emphasis on individual unit micro. (Only talking about multiplayer, of course).

I almost feel like if AoE3 were to be released today instead of in 2005 (minus homecity leveling system), it would actually have been far more successful because it's a more accessible RTS than other games in the genre. The lack of dropsites and the inclusion of unit formations make two of the most difficult mechanics to master less of a problem to newer players, but still leaves some room for skill expression (although maybe it could've been executed a bit better). Most of the time, at least up until major level, or sometimes even higher, you can get away with minimal macro skills, and rely heavily on attack move to be successful in battles.

Yes, I'm aware that this sounds as though it opposes the opinion I put forward in the thread about whether it's more important to improve your strategy or your micro, but I actually think that the way AoE3 is designed only makes it seem like mechanics are unimportant, when really you need both equally in order to improve at higher levels.


When SC2 came out, for example, it was pretty popular; I even remember several of my friends from school were playing it which was surprising to me. But they only played the campaign, and when it came to multiplayer they played maybe a maximum of 10 games before leaving the game behind in favour of other games. To me it didn't seem like the casual gamer could find SC2 very fun most of the time, as your macro/micro/apm mechanics were significantly more important than your actual strategy/build order. If you didn't have those skills, there was absolutely no way you could execute a build properly, or transition into the mid-late games effectively.

And without the casual gamer, any game's days are numbered, I think.


If any future RTS game is going to be successful, I think it has to do a good job of masking how important individual unit control is, while still including ways to improve it.

I'm not sure I really articulated that the way I wanted to, but what do you guys think?

[fightinfrenchman]

I know a lot of AoE 2 players don't like AoE 3 because of the cards, which they found "confusing," and in the Neolithic den games some Basement players didn't use cards because they thought they were unimportant.

[Garja]

To me eyes RTS = competitive multiplayer. And that's not casual play.

[gibson]

Rts is just a dying game mode. Maybe a good game could bring it back a bit but for casual players they're too hard to learn. They play the campaign for 10 hours and then go play fortnite, and for competitive players they don't have the same pro scene as mobas or fps. Why play rts where you have to be at the very top to make a living when you can get paid 5k a month on a tier 2 csgo team or just stream fortnite for a living

[fightinfrenchman]

To me eyes RTS = competitive multiplayer. And that's not casual play.

Lol you would think that

[Mitoe]

To me eyes RTS = competitive multiplayer. And that's not casual play.

I don't think a truly competitive game can exist without the casual player at it's core, though. If you're attracted to competition, then you'd want to go where the competition is greatest, which would require a large player base. If the game isn't welcoming to newcomers then the competitive scene will never grow or evolve.

[Djigit]

I don't think the difficulty is a reasonable reason to say RTS genre is not welcoming. Counter Strike is much more difficult than COD or BF and yet it attracts a substantial amount of (new) players.
The RTS genre would be much more successful if it was free-to-play with a micropayment strategy.

[deleted_user]

Yeah but CSGO is still easier than any RTS. All you have to do is WASD and left click. It's simple, entertaining, and addictive.

FTP games are inherently more accessible but require large player bases to work. In other words, something no RTS can support.

[Mitoe]

I think AoE4 would be able to support F2P, but I don’t see Microsoft publishing it as F2P.

[deleted_user0]

imo the answer should be in mp/sp. The competitiveness should be in the MP. The appeal to the casual gamer in the SP > vs AI modes. SC2 had a very fun MP in my opinion and the AI was actually good (compared to aoe anyway XD). I played aoe3 for years offline before i even considered playing it online. Might be the same for others as well.

[Lukas_L99]

I don't think the difficulty is a reasonable reason to say RTS genre is not welcoming. Counter Strike is much more difficult than COD or BF and yet it attracts a substantial amount of (new) players.
The RTS genre would be much more successful if it was free-to-play with a micropayment strategy.

Well but that’s also cause Valve kept introducing stuff such as weapon skins, operations or drops at major tournaments to attract and keep casual players.
Now the last operation was released about a year ago if i remember correctly and the number of new CS:GO players is going down. Now that might also have to do with the battle royale hype at the moment. Still Valve is being criticised for not doing enough to attract casual players in CS right now.

[Goodspeed]

I find AoE2 a great game to play casually, despite the hard(er) mechanics. The campaigns are good and there are many, and there are a lot of wacky game modes/maps you can play in multiplayer that are fun but don't lose touch with the core gameplay like is often the case in AoE3 (scenarios, treaty, etc). Team and late game in general are better balanced as well.
It's hard to pull this off, an RTS where you can play multiplayer casually, but I think AoE2 has managed it. In SC2 for example it seems unthinkable.

[[Armag] diarouga]

It seems to me that many games nowadays are designed with accessibility to the casual player in mind.

That doesn't necessarily mean that the games are always easy, only that they don't require a lot of time investment to be fun to the new or casual user. Look at battle royale games now; you have to learn and practice a lot if you want to be really good, but it's very easy to have fun even as a noob.

For the RTS genre, however, this is not the case. I think it is very difficult to have an RTS that appeals to both casual and competitive players alike. You have to learn way more and practice way more if you want to reach an acceptable level of play where you're no longer complete trash.


With AoE4 coming up, will it be successful among new RTS players or modern casual gamers? I'm not sure that it will. I don't really see this game appealing to both casual players and competitive players, assuming that it follows the common RTS tropes: dropsites / heavy emphasis on individual unit micro. (Only talking about multiplayer, of course).

I almost feel like if AoE3 were to be released today instead of in 2005 (minus homecity leveling system), it would actually have been far more successful because it's a more accessible RTS than other games in the genre. The lack of dropsites and the inclusion of unit formations make two of the most difficult mechanics to master less of a problem to newer players, but still leaves some room for skill expression (although maybe it could've been executed a bit better). Most of the time, at least up until major level, or sometimes even higher, you can get away with minimal macro skills, and rely heavily on attack move to be successful in battles.

Yes, I'm aware that this sounds as though it opposes the opinion I put forward in the thread about whether it's more important to improve your strategy or your micro, but I actually think that the way AoE3 is designed only makes it seem like mechanics are unimportant, when really you need both equally in order to improve at higher levels.


When SC2 came out, for example, it was pretty popular; I even remember several of my friends from school were playing it which was surprising to me. But they only played the campaign, and when it came to multiplayer they played maybe a maximum of 10 games before leaving the game behind in favour of other games. To me it didn't seem like the casual gamer could find SC2 very fun most of the time, as your macro/micro/apm mechanics were significantly more important than your actual strategy/build order. If you didn't have those skills, there was absolutely no way you could execute a build properly, or transition into the mid-late games effectively.

And without the casual gamer, any game's days are numbered, I think.


If any future RTS game is going to be successful, I think it has to do a good job of masking how important individual unit control is, while still including ways to improve it.

I'm not sure I really articulated that the way I wanted to, but what do you guys think?

I totally agree with this statement, and I've been arguing with friends about that for years now. I think that there's a "noobification" in the current society, whether it is about games, studies, or actually anything.
People don't want to use their brain, nor practice to improve their mechanics, thus school and games are made easier, because people enjoy easy things.

I have two relevant examples of how it works, my brothers. One has been playing League of Legends for about 4 years, and is still stucked in silver league (that would be like pr 14 in aoe3), and the other plays Fortnite more than 20h a week and is trash tier at it.

The thing is that people, and my brothers included don't want to play well, nor competitively, and they definitely don't want to use their brain to improve their strategy, they just want to play with friends after they get out of school and chill while being terrible.

All in all, it's pretty clear that managing an army, an economy, and finding new strategies isn't what people want today, they just want to have one unit and snipe the opponents, and that's something which works very well in Moba and fps games.

Now, why doesn't it work in RTS games? I think these are the 3 big reasons:

1) RTS games are 1v1 orientated games. That's a fact, competitive tourneys are all hosted in 1v1 on aoe2 and aoe3 and on broodwar, warcraft 3 and sc2, team game is barely a thing.
Thus, noobs can't play with their friends and team against some opponents, and that's actually a big deal.

2) Since RTS games are 1v1 games, you can't blame your team. Thus, if you're bad, you have to face it. Unless you're garja ( ) you can't realistically lose 20-0 to a guy and believe that you're still better.
And of course, thinking that you spend 30 hours a week playing a video game and that you suck at it is an awful feeling, it's much better to think that you're great but stuck in low leagues because you get a bad team again and again.
And that's how my brothers actually behave, the one who's stuck in silver league on LOL thinks that he is top plat/diam but that he keeps getting a bad team which is why he is silver.
People don't want to deal with losses, and they want to believe they're super good. And of course, since RTS games have a higher skill cap noobs have to face how bad they are.

3) While for RTS lovers like me, managing an economy and an army at the same time is the greatest thing in video games, casual players don't like it, because it doesn't make them feel like heroes.
If you ask people (or talk with your friends who play video games), 90% or so will tell you that for them, sniping 5 guys in 1v5 is much more rewarding than outplaying an opponent strategically after a 10min positioning war.

Of course, game compagnies are aware of this issue and tried to make RTS games more appealing to noobs, but it didn't quite work, and it will not work.

1) The first idea was to add a single player mod with campaigns. That's a really good idea and it has worked in the past but I don't think it's still going to work because campaigns are by definition single player, which means that people can't play with their friends, which is what most noobs are looking for.
Although it's very entertaining, I feel that single player games don't work anymore. 10 years ago (maybe it was because I was young but that's how I felt), 80% of the people I knew played single player games, now I'd say it's only 30%, and the others just play MOBAs or FPS games instead.
In addition, the guys who play the campaign and stop surely support the RTS compagnies by buying the game, but they don't actually help the competitive/esport community because they don't play online and they don't watch tournaments.

2) The other idea is, as Mitoe pointed out, to develop "easier" RTS games, but that's not a solution imo. As I explained above, MOBAs are still better for noobs, so they don't really play it, and it splits the RTS community. If aoe4 is a noob friendly game, I'm just not going to play it, and same goes for aoe2 players or bw players.
Quite frankly, the reason why aoe3 is worse than aoe2, bw and sc2 is because the game was meant to appeal to noobs. That's why we're in a stale meta right now, because they wanted the game to be fun, and they didn't focus on the unit quality (half of the units are useless), nor on the shipment quality (I'd say 70% of the shipments and upgrades are useless in this game), the way the economy works is totally retarded, TCs are useless in 1v1 and you can't invest in eco early in the game. AOE3 tried to make an easy game, and we have to face it, it was a failure.

[[Armag] diarouga]

I find AoE2 a great game to play casually, despite the hard(er) mechanics. The campaigns are good and there are many, and there are a lot of wacky game modes/maps you can play in multiplayer that are fun but don't lose touch with the core gameplay like is often the case in AoE3 (scenarios, treaty, etc). Team and late game in general are better balanced as well.
It's hard to pull this off, an RTS where you can play multiplayer casually, but I think AoE2 has managed it. In SC2 for example it seems unthinkable.

Playing casually on sc2 is surely unthinkable, but I don't think that aoe2 is a game to play casually.
You play it casually because you know a lot about RTS games and you enjoy the design of the game, but a casual player can't understand how awesome the eco management on aoe2 is, and I think that the graphism/QoL issues stop a lot of players.

[Goodspeed]

Sure it's only for people who enjoy RTS, but I think you underestimate the casual player base. Voobly is the tip of the iceberg. Most never even touch multiplayer.
https://steamcharts.com/app/221380#All That's just the steam version.
Graphics and QoL are non-issues. Most casual RTS players don't rely on attack move, for example, they probably don't even know it exists. And they definitely don't produce out of 10 military buildings at the same time. The thing is, when you get to a point where these things become important, you are already used to it. You take issue with these things only because you come from newer games and, being a competitive player, are immediately playing on a level where they matter.
The graphics are timeless.

[fightinfrenchman]

Plenty of people play AoE 3 casually, people here think they don't exist because they live in their little patch bubble but they're out there

[[Armag] diarouga]

Plenty of people play AoE 3 casually, people here think they don't exist because they live in their little patch bubble but they're out there

Plenty
Like what? 1000, that's really nothing.
Furthermore I think that a good game needs casual players (because that's the core of the player base), and a competitive scene (for streams, entertainment and game promotion).
In aoe3, both the competitive and the casual player bases are too small.

[fightinfrenchman]

Plenty of people play AoE 3 casually, people here think they don't exist because they live in their little patch bubble but they're out there

Plenty
Like what? 1000, that's really nothing.
Furthermore I think that a good game needs casual players (because that's the core of the player base), and a competitive scene (for streams, entertainment and game promotion).
In aoe3, both the competitive and the casual player bases are too small.

I think it's more than 1k, but plenty of people get driven away by other factors like FTJ and forum elitism

[[Armag] diarouga]

Plenty of people play AoE 3 casually, people here think they don't exist because they live in their little patch bubble but they're out there

Plenty
Like what? 1000, that's really nothing.
Furthermore I think that a good game needs casual players (because that's the core of the player base), and a competitive scene (for streams, entertainment and game promotion).
In aoe3, both the competitive and the casual player bases are too small.

I think it's more than 1k, but plenty of people get driven away by other factors like FTJ and forum elitism

Forum elitism isn't really a thing because a casual player, by definition, doesn't join a high level forum. Else it means that he wants to improve and thus play competitively.

[fightinfrenchman]

This isn't a "high level forum;" it's where aoe3 players come to learn more because that's where everybody's at.

[[Armag] diarouga]

This isn't a "high level forum;" it's where aoe3 players come to learn more because that's where everybody's at.

Well if you want to learn more, you want to improve and play competitively, don't you?
And it is a high level forum, I'd say that the people posting are on average 1st lieutenant.

[fightinfrenchman]

This isn't a "high level forum;" it's where aoe3 players come to learn more because that's where everybody's at.

Well if you want to learn more, you want to improve and play competitively, don't you?
And it is a high level forum, I'd say that the people posting are on average 1st lieutenant.

I disagree, would like the see a poll to see what the "average" poster really is

[EAGLEMUT]

Plenty of people play AoE 3 casually, people here think they don't exist because they live in their little patch bubble but they're out there

Plenty
Like what? 1000, that's really nothing.
Furthermore I think that a good game needs casual players (because that's the core of the player base), and a competitive scene (for streams, entertainment and game promotion).
In aoe3, both the competitive and the casual player bases are too small.

1000 is a real understatement.
ESO by itself had 10k unique account log-ins in the past 24 hours.
Right now ESO has ~400 users online while Steam reports ~1400 users playing the game, meaning more than 1000 users are currently playing the game offline through Steam alone. Many more of course play offline without Steam, or online over gameranger/voobly.
We're at higher population right now due to sale, but the percentage difference remains large even outside sales (x3.5 now versus x2.5 for whole last month's average).
Can't know the exact number of offline players, but seems like a reasonable guess to say it's at least in the tens of thousands on a particular day.


If you multiply your value by 100, it may actually be closer to reality, depending on the definition of "casual player" and observed time period. Especially if you factor in that a "casual player" likely doesn't play the game every day.

Sources:
http://agecommunity.com/_server_status_/
https://steamcharts.com/app/105450

[Hazza54321]

those stats are so pointless lol, theres never more than 600 usually, and the "unique" accoutns are just smurfs and invite spammer accounts

[[Armag] diarouga]

Also, as I said previously, the players who play offline don't actually help the game since they don't bring activity, I was talking about casual online players, who are still probably more than 1k players.