Ofc it’s not always that clear cut and there is a lot in between these examples. But in my experience, RTS and maybe strategy in general, can be really hard to understand what went wrong, even on a basic level.

MOBAs are, imho somewhere on between. High skillcap both in regards or game knowledge and strategy, but also in agility, but also somewhat readable. Sure, you might wonder why your gorillas punch did way less damage than their gorilla, but a look at the KDA or their gear might already give you a hint.

So I guess with the overall growth of the gaming market and games becoming more and more expensive, the small community that actually enjoys RTS isn’t really „worth“ that money.

I wouldn't claim they're quite so opaque, but Quakelike FPS games have a similar problem. They appear to be about shooting, but in fact at least 50% of the game is resource control (and even the combat itself is more nuanced than a new player realises). So when you're a new player losing to an experienced player, it can be super confusing and demoralising. Confusing because you probably don't realise why they are dominating you so hard and what you can do to stop it; demoralising because even if you persist and improve in one or two areas, it'll barely make a difference to the scoreboard. (You've improved your aim and learned to time items? Great, but the other guy knows the maps extremely well and can move around them far quicker than you, knows exactly how to position himself in a fight and when to use each weapon, dodges in unpredictable ways while predicting your own dodging and firing patterns, and so on. Meanwhile your newfound realisation that the armour and health items matter, and increasing ability to keep track of their timers, is making your routes through the map more predictable.)

It got to the point that on such servers I'd protest by refusing to use guns at all and used a crowbar and grenades exclusively. Not sure if anyone really took note of what I was protesting against, but it sure got me on top of some monthly crowbar kill leaderboards :)

Famously one of the Default Taunts on Age Of Empires 2[0] is *You played for two hours to die like this?*

[0] https://ageofempires.fandom.com/wiki/Taunts

But can't but agree with the general angle, MOBA's in general are less punishing to players at a deep psychological level, StarCraft 2 "suffered" from what the playerbase called "Ladder Anxiety", which was players simply unable to deal with loss and loss aversion as a consequence of them tying their own ego and self-worth to how well they fared playing StarCraft, to the level that Blizzard on one of the expansions had to release a mode where players simply would not lose MMR/ELO points from loses nor earn them on wins, a ranked-less mode and that alleviated a considerable amount of pressure

> So I guess with the overall growth of the gaming market and games becoming more and more expensive, the small community that actually enjoys RTS isn’t really „worth“ that money.

Yeah, this is very much the case, at least for large AAA productions and companies, tho AA studios such as KingArt Games or Sunspear Games have been making inroads into creating new RTS titles which make me very happy as an avid RTS fan

This doesn't sound like we disagree at all. Although I definitely felt that ladder anxiety in LoL, I never would have thought about playing SC2 or WC3 ladder. Even watching these games I dont feel like I understand whats going on in detail. For some reason that felt "better" for MOBAs. But that feeling might very well be biased cause I played more MOBAs then RTS in total hours.

> tho AA studios such as KingArt Games or Sunspear Games have been making inroads into creating new RTS titles which make me very happy as an avid RTS fan

Oh yeah, reminds me that I still need to play some Iron Harvest...

Losing as a newbie in Starcraft and AoE feels way less bad.

And it kind of fits in the scheme, as MOBAs are, in a broader sense, at least partially, a game of strategy. Not nesassarily when you start as new player, but winnign consistenly also takes thinking ahead a lot. What risks to take, which weakness to exploit, what item to buy. Theres a lot of just in time decisions to make, while also keeping the bigger picture in mind.

Maybe MOBAs are just "direct action" enough to cater to a wider audiance, but strategy enough to share some of the same problems?

On the other hand you can abandon starcraft game at any moment with no consequences and it doesn't last for 50 minutes. If you got toxic teammates in DOTA you are pretty much stuck with them for almost an hour.

This community was completely destroyed by SC2, multiplayer really only appealed to serious competitive players. It sucked unless you only wanted to grind ladder. That community kept the game as a whole alive and acted as a gateway.

Competitive RTS is very stressful. I would say, more stressful than other competitive games as mistakes, or rather, the absence of great moves, compounds quickly into a disadvantage.

I was in the same camp when I only played RTS games, but after my friend got me into dota I have to admit there's a lot of depth there that I wasn't aware of.

Also the win conditions are much more obvious in RTS games, just after I switched I had no idea that pulling, stacking, wave cutting, denying was important. Also the vision battle is more involved in MOBAs.

But that's kind of the point: you don't have to be aware of it to have a good time. Sure, all of that stuff matters in competitive play, but it can still be fun to just run around killing things if you don't know what you're doing. On the other hand, seeing artillery blasting your base from afar and having no idea what to do about it is really demoralizing.

FWIW, I think this applies more to Dota 2 than it does to LoL. I haven't played the latter in many years, but I remember it being much more rigid and cookie-cutter strategy-wise than Dota, and the micro decisions mattered a lot more, which meant that sub-optimal play was more obvious. In Dota 2, your poor item build can still win the game with a single good team fight or just generally better awareness.

If you win, you can feel really good because you had a 17/2 K/D. If you lose, you can blame your teammates. You can also play with your friends. With starcaft even though team matches are supported, they are unpopular, and there’s no easy way to look at the stats for the game and feel like a badass if you win.

Brood War also has custom maps with relatively crude, but still use programming (loops and triggers) that allowed players to build thousands of various custom maps. MOBA genere and (probably) tower defense comes from StarCraft Brood War custom maps. There were many other categories (e.g. bound maps, puzzle maps, control maps) that are poorly represented even nowadays.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Al3jvLYsmHI

Just as a specific example. If you take two teams of equal MMR and one had all the character counters so they "should" win. If the team with the better characters doesn't know how to pull the safelane, they will just straight up lose. Full stop. They will get gold starved and unless the other team throws (which is very common lol) they should lose.

Also, losing like this in dota is anti-fun. Its really not a good time for like anybody, the winner of the loser. Its just one team dumpstering another and it happens at all levels.

I see someone's played Supreme Commander. I love the game but it's the archetypal example of what you're talking about: winning depends on detailed knowledge of dozens of different units across four factions and simultaneous maximally-efficient economy building. Building a tutorial for it is impossible. It's only playable by the sort of people who will read wikis and watch videos and lose and lose and lose until they have some idea what's going on.

This causes the other problem with RTSes: the (small, dedicated) community has been running for fifteen years and is incredibly unfriendly to new players. Having less than ~150 hours playtime is often grounds for being kicked from games, which doesn't help expand the playerbase.

Unfortunately, RTSes simplified enough to avoid these problems aren't nearly as fun. The genre just works better as a community passion project than a commercial enterprise.

One day maybe there'll be games with just one move... just to dumb games down to the lowest common denominator and not leave anyone out.

surprisingly a good amount of depth from just one move, if played right

Used to play DotA (as in, the custom WC3 map) and LoL. I downloaded Pokemon Unite last week. Instantly understood pretty much everything except the individual feel and tactics of each character.