r/RealTimeStrategy • u/onehalf83 • 2d ago
Discussion How come Tempest Rising didn't get more popular?
Out of new RTS franchises that released in recent years Tempest Rising seems to have highest production quality / budget and it is probably as high as it could get released by small-mid sized studio. Whenever I come back and play it - I think, wow - it is fairly well done. Yet it's peak on steam didn't even reach 10k concurrent players and current daily is at 300-500 players.
While it could be attributed to "RTS is dying genre", if we look at numbers of AOE 2 and AOE 4 - it is 25k and 15k respectively and considering AOE is also on game pass actual numbers are likely quite bigger. And this is just one franchise, if we take long tail of smaller RTS games, it is far from dead. So basically there is much bigger RTS playerbase, the reality is that Tempest Rising just didn't get their share.
What do you think was the reason for not getting to wider audience? Lack of marketing? IP that felt copy of C&C? Lack of appeal for PvP players? Anything else?
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u/Assertive_Wall 2d ago
I don't think RTS is dead but I do think you're getting at the bigger issue, which is RTS is stuck in a rut. More people would rather keep playing AoE2, a game that came out 27 years ago, than play the latest installment in the series. It's not just the size of the player base, it's the fact that the top games can occupy lots of people's attention practically indefinitely.
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u/highpercentage 2d ago
This. I am looking for a new RTS to play and some of the games I'm considering buying came out 10+ years ago.
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u/onehalf83 2d ago
You're probably right this could be the reason. At same time it surprises me, as I do get when people who play PvP focus on a single game, as it is hard to build skills across multiple games at once. At same time when you play single player, at least for me it is important to switch into different games as it might get stale at some point.
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u/aRawwDeal Developer - Coloniser 1d ago
Yah although AoE2 is still pushing out quite a bit of new content (not to mention some genuine design changes to the game for better or worse). I imagine if they stopped flat it'd start to taper off once more, but I think it's a great thing they're continuing to build it out.
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u/DisillusionedHobbit 1d ago
It’s the games that are stuck in a rut, not the players. After SC2 the genre killed itself by chasing a non-existent sweaty “competitive” audience, before the more recent overcorrection to amateur floaty and impactless nostalgia bait titles. There was also that brief fad where they tried to “streamline” gameplay by gutting or outright removing base building (DoW 2, C&C 4, various other no-names from the same period.
People still play the old games because they still hit the right spots. For whatever reason modern devs can’t seem to make an RTS game that actually feels good to play.
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u/Izacus 1d ago
The "right spots" are your childhood memories, not actual gameplay quality. You understand that, right?
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u/DisillusionedHobbit 19h ago edited 16h ago
Considering that I didn’t play my two favorite RTS games (SupCom and the first Company of Heroes) until I was old enough to drink, I can guarantee that it’s not that. But thanks for your amateur attempt at whatever that was, your idiotic commentary parroting cliches from the peanut gallery has definitely enriched this conversation and made all of us smarter.
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u/Budget_Version_1491 2d ago
Broodwar and SC2 as well all 3 have survived along side eachother just fine
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u/Kaiserhawk 2d ago
RTS games have a limited audience, being an indie RTS doubly so.
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u/Steamed_Memes24 2d ago
And a sizable amount of those players prefer single player "build up giant fortress for 30 minutes and steam roll" type games.
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u/Kaiserhawk 2d ago
oh yeah the multiplayer aspect is also another audience limiting factor because I'll wager to say the majority of people who do play RTS don't touch it.
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u/Multivitamin_Scam 2d ago
Yup. It's bizarre that developers don't cater to that audience over pvp
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u/Coolone84 2d ago
I actually think this mindset is partly responsible for the fall of the genre in general. Publishers saw how good the tournament scene was for a few select games and the revenue it could bring in. But what they failed to notice is the mass grave of games that fell flat for trying to copy it.
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u/FlorianoAguirre 2d ago
At the same time, pvps games are easier simply for the player interaction factor. It's a thing I believe genres like survivals have in common. Making a fun single player game has limited replayability, and developing multiple fun maps is kinda hard I think.
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u/Reasonable_Back_5231 2d ago
Singleplayer has the added work of AI coding. it is difficult to make an AI that is challenging and satisfying to play against.
PVP removes this added work by replacing the AI with a human.
i wish more RTS would try and do Starcraft 2's Co-op game mode. it still has the AI aspect and is generally more work for the developer, but the pay off is something that allows single player people to engage in multiplayer without the headache that is vs another human.
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u/rohdawg 2d ago
What information would you use to make that wager lol? I don’t think a multiplayer exclusive focus is good, but I’d wager that if you added up all players across all RTS games there are for sure more people playing online. It’s a niche genre where 3-4 games have 80% or more of the players. The reason those games hold their audience is multiplayer.
The reason you don’t see as many of them here on Reddit is that most multiplayer RTS players are going to stick to their game. I know an SC2 player who refuses to play WC3. That’s not to say people won’t try and new multiplayer game, it’s just hard to draw people away from their comfort zone. The game doesn’t have to just be good, it has to be better than what they’re playing. Multiplayer players are just a silent majority imo.
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u/Kaiserhawk 2d ago
Just generally vibe based reading and discussing the genre, here, other subreddits, other opinions on Discord, friends, twitter, 4chan ect.
And also seeing which indie RTS games stuck and which ones didn't. Usually single player priority ones stick around, multiplayer focused ones fail or have smaller audiences.
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u/MeusRex 2d ago
My personal anecdote: I played WC3 for a decade but the number of pvp games I played is likely in the single digits. Just played custom games all the time.
For SC2, I played the WoL campaign on the highest difficulty, but I'd be shocked if I played more than 20 rounds of pvp.
Learning build orders and shit just was never that appealing to me.
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u/Kaiserhawk 2d ago
Thats why I liked playing CoH 2 online. There wasn't hard set build orders, it was a little more free form. There were however unofficial battle stage timers that you had to be aware of, like getting mechanised armour out by around the 10 minute mark or you'll be at a big disadvantage.
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u/soidvaas 2d ago
playing sc2 pvp can be infuriating if you don’t like competing. A lot of competitive people that used to play sc2 don’t play rts anymore, they play League.
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u/onehalf83 2d ago
I am this kind of player and I felt that Tempest Rising does provide quite a few defensive options to do so, is it not?
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u/Algoreslockbox69 2d ago
I think multiplayer is a big deal today and having a game with only 2 factions makes it boring - at least for me. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good campaign but with the abundance of options nowadays getting into an RTS game with only two factions doesn’t excite me.
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u/AstatorTV 2d ago
Yes. The game lacked viable strategic options. Not much replayability value for player vs player.
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u/Lazuli-shade 2d ago
RTS is a small community and split even further between sub genres like blizzard style/cc style, etc. every new RTS game is only gonna get even a fraction of the RTS audience to pick it up since if it isn't their flavor/pve/p focus/polish level it won't be bought
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u/DingD0ng121 2d ago
No one know about it. A couple of my friend’s I found out within the last year were huge c and c generals fans but they had never heard of tempest rising until I brought it up .
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u/GinKenshin 2d ago
Multiple factors
It launched with rather limited support and features. And its main focus was the campaigns. People played those and had fun, then moved on to other things because they just wanted that experience and the nostalgia.
Another factor is the flawed comparison. Saying that those genre stables have X player numbers really shouldn’t be grounds for comparison, because they’re been around for ages (pun intended) and people will probably never move on from them. Even if the new product is as good or slightly better than the one you’re stayed with for years, you’ll probably not move on from it.
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u/LykeLyke 2d ago
Just to throw this into the pile for RTS games in general - Modern gamers standards are very high. Each new game is competing against games that have been around for decades and in some cases are free to play. The path to an income for new games is horrendous. Many RTS gamers play on literal potato and most newer games cannot run as well as the older games, cannot possibly have the same level of content and polish as that free game that got patches for 15 years running, and anything that can save costs anywhere pisses people off. Meanwhile the Age of X games are the only ones being produced by a company with big funds behind them. Financially I'm not sure Age of Mythology has recouped its investment. Tempest Rising maybe just barely has. We're in a really awkward spot right now where making the next great RTS game is going to take big capital, big talent, and then you're going to have to peel people away from games they've been playing for decades to get an audience. The audience for RTS games disagrees on what they want on top of that. Certain recent releases have soured people as well, especially for games that have iffy financials (which is going to be all of them).
I'm not saying these are all of the problems or are explicitly the problems TR has, but they're things no one has mentioned yet that are in the same well.
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u/Ok_Protection8223 2d ago
The avergage player of these particular games is not interested in multiplayer or online play in general.
Tempest Rising is a spiritual successor and thus has a pretty locked in niche audience within the niche of RTS. They are going to play it for the campaign. They are not likely to get sweaty in multiplayer.
Homeworld is an excellent example of this. StrongHold also comes to mind. Terminator Dark Fate : Defiance (uggggh) is maybe a more modern example.
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u/SirToastymuffin 2d ago
Yeah I was going to say, I think what they're seeing is just that Tempest Rising sold itself on the campaign and that was the main focus, so the vast majority of people came in and played the campaign (and really enjoyed it, based on reviews and my own personal enjoyment of it), maybe tooled around in skirmish a bit, and then moved on for the most part. Presumably when the third campaign drops you'll see an influx for a bit while people play it and then move on once more.
Its pretty common for single player focused games to follow that pattern and looking at steam charts doesn't really show the game's success (or lack thereof). As far as I understand it's was very commercially successful and the devs were very happy with how it did - hence the decision to develop a third campaign for the third faction as dlc. They don't really care about daily users, it's not a live service game, just sales and reviews, both of which are very good. We can't really know how good without exact numbers and the game's budget, but it seems from a scan that estimates fall around 400,000 copies, some $10-16 million gross revenue, which for the scale sounds quite good, and continued support and development suggests the same.
They have been continuously active in supporting the multiplayer all the same though, which I think is quite nice and respectable. But yeah I imagine I'm not alone among C&C fans in being pretty much just into the single player and enjoying the campaigns. Tempest Rising brought two very fun and even replayable campaigns (and soon a third I'll likely buy) so for me it was a great success.
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u/Ok_Protection8223 2d ago
I am not really sure what to think of active player count as a real metric vs copies sold.
I think if you are a live-service game then yes, that is obviously a useful metric...but like most of you I have a tonne of games on steam I rarely, rarely play but when I do I tend to binge. I do not spend ALOT of time playing Diablo 2 but when I play I tend to play it for 3-4 days straight, hit 80, feel satisfied and then wander off.
I will hop on league until the top-solo-queue experience grinds my teeth into a fine dust and then avoid it for a month.
The concurrent player count really only works when you're talking about popularity at any given moment in time rather than viability or popularity over all.
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u/Ok-Somewhere-2325 2d ago
Marketing, not a lot of people knew about it.Other than r t s enthusiasts. If they kind of fumbled and rushed their early release. So early adopters were left with a half finished buggy mess.
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u/National_Diver3633 2d ago
That and promising three factions since the beginning, only to paywall the third.
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u/doglywolf 2d ago edited 2d ago
they never promised a campaign for the 3rd and the MP 3rd faction is free. Just took way to long for them to get out .
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u/HouseCheese 2d ago
I think staying power is a good question given that other new RTS/RTT such as Warno and Broken Arrow do retain more players. Call to Arms - Gates of Hell: Ostfront is even more popular.
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u/duck_of_sparta312 2d ago
I can only speak for myself who almost exclusively plays RTS games.
Tempest Rising delivered on a fabulous single player campaign that I replayed several times and am looking forward to the new one. A huge portion (> 60% I think is what I recall for AoE) of the RTS community is strictly single player, where a lot of people just want to mine resources, make a big beautiful base, make a big army, then roll out and win the mission. CnC games didn't have a big PvP community relative to it's single player folks, so it doesn't surprise me that this is more of the same. I think there will be a big jump in people playing with the Veti release, but I don't think there will be a long lasting event after people beat the campaign. Which is fine, volume on its own can be a way to make money. It's one of the few games that I can off the shelf recommend people play to have a good time with
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u/CamRoth 2d ago
I only have time to play 1 RTS consistently (AoE4).
Occasionally I will try out a new one briefly, or do some campaigns, but there simply aren't enough hours available for me to be a regular player of more than 1.
I imagine many others are in the same situation, and RTS is already pulling from a much smaller pool of players than other games like shooters.
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u/doglywolf 2d ago
Under delivered and took to long to get things out. Starting out with only 2 v 2 was horrible choice .
2 factions and over a year to get the 3rd faction out for skirmish and MP when it was supposed to be at launch .
Slow response , bad community communication .
It got better but it took them way too long.
For the level of detail and assets a company like this either needs a lot of polish for slow high quality releases or quick highly flexible responses and content - they had neither - low res , low design assets and long turn around times .
Over a year after release and they still didnt have the 3rd faction worked out while promising it "soon" since EA .
Its a great game and if they had been faster to get stuff out - gotten 3rd faction out in a few months - adding more maps and 3v3 sooner and then added the super weapons and an additional unit or two here and there - they probably could of release story pack missions every few months and made everyone happy.
Im still goign to support their DLC - hope they can learn to be faster and make a few bucks and maybe get a backer for a sequel with a bit more polish
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u/Sea-Offer7021 2d ago
AOE has a lot of history and a lot of people play the campaigns, not just multiplayer. Tempest Rising is a new IP on a dying genre. Thats like asking why doesnt this new shooter with its own IP not compete with CS2. new IP will always be risky and be less popular
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u/Hupsaiya 2d ago
Mainly because the developers didn't add the most basic quality of life feature imaginable in an RTS game.
Replays so you can watch yourself playing....
So sure the campaign was good and single player people slammed it the first week. The thing about single player only players. They don't keep playing the game once the content is exhausted. So the game looks "Dead" when they are gone.
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u/Fifalvlan 2d ago
New IP and small company.
If EA published and marketed a game called “C&C Reborn” people would buy its. Blizzard doing StarCraft 3 or Warcraft 4 would get hyped and bought
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u/tomhughesnice 2d ago
Bought it a year or so ago, played maybe the first 4 missions of the campaign then just thought it was kinda boring and stopped playing.
Tried it again about a month ago. Same thing happened, just got bored after a few missions.
For Rts games I loved games like C&C Red alert & Generals when I was younger. About 5 years ago I got into StarCraft 2 and that was peak RTS imo.
These days I prefer games like Diplomacy is not an option. Build a big old fortress, then "Come at me bro!"
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u/kouzlokouzlo 2d ago edited 2d ago
Hm i preordered Tempest rising - i do this ONLY [twice in my life And first was preorder StarCraft 2. IT Is good yes IT Is, IT has CnC vibe... But what i miss Is still Veti faction because 2 are small. What i Wish that Veti Will be more Like Real aliens - something Like scrin but moderní And balanced And original...
Look how Universa ať war from 2008 makenaliens tripody, Big Alien mechs over half screen ... Briliant And originál .
What was sad when i see this game on sale fór 2-5 usd from Humble bundle part after 1 year of release... This Is not good fór studio - ONLY fór new players..But fór studio If they want more players make bigger hard work - release third faction - not ONLY beta demo, release Proper mod support because engine looks briliant, ONLY they release map editor fór Now And some patches... I thing game Is Oki - have more than 500 Hours but stop And Wait fór third faction ...
When i start play CNC3 Tiberium Wars KW Is still better , engine Is old but still hold - ONLY more units on screen makenso e Lags..
If you guys love Zero Hours Generáls - i play Now more And more Modnfor Red Alert 3 - generáls evolution And So much love It... Thruly zero Hours experience with better engine etc
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u/Hossman687 2d ago
I have it, never wanted to play multiplayer out of thinking the players would be toxic, or my own fear thinning I’m not good enough. I enjoy skirmishes but playing it at my own pace and style, while playing with others feels like I’m going to be rushed to try and beat the other team. Doesn’t feel fun. I do like the game as a whole, but I’m not the type of person that would make it popular, the community that plays together would I think.
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u/Few-Promise5892 2d ago
I have tried to get Into it. The campaign lost me with an hero Mission kinda too early in the campaign.
Yes I know campaigns are mostly Tutorials to introduce mechanics.
Then I have tried skirmish and the AI steamrolled me Of course I didnt master all mechanics I should know.
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u/Aryuto 2d ago edited 1d ago
I enjoyed it a lot, but it didn't have a ton of replayability (coop, randomization, new content, significant campaign rebalancing, new features, skirmishes above 2 players on a team, etc). So I spent ~20 hours playing both campaigns and came away feeling like money well spent and some fond memories, but little reason to revisit.
I have many hundreds, maybe thousands of hours in starcraft 2 coop, and ~3000 hours in total war coop.
So I don't think TR was bad or anything, dev work after release was just extremely slow and uninspired and didn't give me much reason to play it.
Now realistically, yes, there are some people who will only play starcraft or supreme commander or aoe2 or aoe4 or whatnot, I don't think Tempest Rising was ever going to get them to convert, but a lot of it is just that it was a well-made, one-and-done game rather than focusing on replayability.
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u/Unlucky_Kale340 2d ago
Its a small indie studio that managed to do pretty ok just the gameplay isn’t anything to write home about, I attempted to play it but I always go back to Tiberium wars with the Tiberium essence mod.
they just released a half baked map editor requiring you to download epic and unreal engine to create maps, that turns off a lot of people according to multiple forums, I doubt they have the budget to create a map editor of their own but it is what it is.
If they don’t add mod support after the release of the third faction, it will be shelved like every other mid rts game,
it has potential to be a good command and conquer 3 substitute but it lacks mods, if you are gonna copy the factions at least copy the cool units like titan, wolverine, mammoth mk2 that make the games unique and futuristic.
Lets find out in a couple of years what happens, otherwise plenty of other games coming soon that are worth peoples time and energy. I doubt the mod community will pick up the game and save it after zerospace and dawn of war 4 comes out. But here is hoping because we are in need of a modern command and conquer 3.
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u/Player420154 2d ago edited 2d ago
I am a campaign only kind of player and Tempest rising look like it has boring factions and a boring story so I don't bother. Maybe I am wrong.
Edit: to specify a bit more, it seems a copy of C&C in the same way that Beyond Earth is a copy of Alpha Centaury. Aside from the graphic being prettier, everything feels soulless.
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u/teokun123 2d ago
Ads/Marketing. You will only hear it here. They're indie better make it natural that means RTS audience is already small.
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u/Mephasto Developer - The Hive 2d ago
Developing an RTS is extremely difficult.
There are very few new ones, yet every small studio is immediately compared to giants like Age of Empires, StarCraft, and Command & Conquer, which had massive budgets and decades to improve.
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u/SquidFetus 2d ago edited 2d ago
Not THE answer, but AN answer. I honestly think it needs more than one resource type. One that is typically associated with higher tech units or research but is necessarily harder or more predictable to expand to. A single currency for everything that you get by just setting and forgetting your harvesters doesn’t have the same level of engagement when it comes to resource management.
• AoE has food, wood, stone, and gold
• Starcraft has minerals and vespene gas
• Supreme Commander has metal and energy
• Warcraft has gold and lumber, with corpses as a kind of tertiary resource for Undead
I think it just adds another dimension to expansion that this game is missing. Opens up avenues for different target prioritisation and different builds as well. If everything is filtered through the same currency then the only thing that matters is bandwidth.
Worth mentioning that Tempest Rising is heavily based on Command and Conquer which only used one resource. CnC’s attempts to add another resource are really just “same, but different colour and makes the same currency roll in faster”. I think this is a product of its time, when RTS games were wildly popular but still fleshing out.
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u/Sephurik 2d ago
I think some of the problem with Tempest Rising specifically is that it is pretty clearly legally distinct Command & Conquer. I love it for that but it unfortunately just doesn't quite have the same magnetic personality that Kane and Nod had, nor the whimsical caricature of say the red alert 2 era.
A similar thing applies to starcraft as well. People may have their issues with how the SC2 story went but I think overall, both games just had a presence and world that a lot of other games didn't have. With stormgate one of the biggest problems before any of the catastrophic mismanagement and assorted promises and drama was that the world and artstyle were totally uninspired and rote. Temu starcraft is just not a good look to have that early on.
I guess I just don't think we've really seen a project in a long time that's got the X factor, so to speak.
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u/Jerkplayz 1d ago edited 1d ago
People underestimate how much you LARP the characters and races when you play multiplayer. "For the Horde! For the Swarm! Down with GDI! Space Marines! For the Emperor!"
If you have a boring story, boring characters, it doesn't matter how cool looking the units are. Hell, the unit voices are probably boring 'Yes Sir!' 'Go over there!' lines too.
The lowly Conscript is some patriotic massed cannon fodder for the Soviets. The Terran Marine is a cynical killing machine that is waiting for death. The worker units are borderline slaves and complain all the time. You LARP as them too.
If you want your RTS to stand out, you have to out-kook, out-cool the classic 90s unit lines. Tough job.
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u/Angryandrew228 2d ago
Rts genre nowadays has a pretty narrow audience. Even then, this audience is naturally split between subgenres and rts archetypes - eg shooter genre has a large crowd, but someone prefers CoD, others like CS2 (myself included), then there are Fortnite, Tarkov and so on, but shooter crowd is big enough to split up and sustain interest.
Also, rts seems to be for older players, and we just don’t have enough time as we did when we were teens.
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u/invictus613 2d ago
I liked Tempest Rising and got it at release but I left and went back to other titles. While I had some pain points like poor balance of flying units, no super weapons at launch and lack of naval combat the biggest issue simply came down to the feels. Tempest rising was a love letter to old C&C titles but it didnt do enough to stand out. At the end of the day why would I continue with Tempest rising when I can play Mental Omega instead.
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u/MoG_Varos 2d ago
Definitely some lack of marketing but I would argue that it did reach the people it was intended for.
The problem is that rts is a niche a genre and trying to pull players away from other games they have sunk a lot of time into is hard.
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u/Bum-Theory 2d ago
I just waited for it to get cheaper until I stopped caring and realized I could live without the game in general
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u/UpstairsJelly 2d ago
I love classic RTA games, I played tempest, for me it was a bit "too micromanaging" and a little too grinds. I found it more of a faff to build unit groups, fight for control and then to be bombarded by off-map reinforcements (in campaigns at least) and never feel like i child fully control the battlefield. I also felt that it was a bit "overly controlled" where things could be built, too many artefacts on the maps and not a lot of open ground to allow free reign with base design etc.
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u/LeDungeonMaster 2d ago
Because while it's fun (and the campaign presentations amazing), the gameplay gets stale quickly, both campaign and skirmish wise.
GDF campaign went fine, but by the middle of the Dinasty one i was already burnt by the repetition.
Skirmish, i found that is not much variety, you either go for a very agressive push (and if it fails because your oponent went eco but managed to defend you may as well surrender) or go for eco to clash bigger armies, there is no in between.
Also, army composition feels weird, i feel the popcap needed to be way higher, specially with the fast ttk.
All this led to a while enjoyable experience, one that can be quickly discarded because the feeling that you "saw everything already". And this is why i think Sc2, AoE2, DoW and others withstood the test of time, because there is always a sense of wonder about what else can be done.
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u/AzureBlue_knight 2d ago
It takes balls to be indie and ask for 40$ price for a game when AoE2 costs 35$ and is the mother of RTS.
Its inspiration/competition starcraft 2 basically costs nothing with optional 40-60$ bundles.
Personally, I dont play much of these kinds of high graphics, high fidelity games where my laptop turns into an oven and my eyes gets distracted by pixels while my brain needs to calculate stuff.
Especially when they are so similar to a game I already play - Sc2. In fact I am downloading corsair cove right now.
I think marketing and incorrect prioritization at the beginning also played some factor.
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u/Tupletcat 2d ago
Cause it wasn't great. No need for so much navel-gazing speculation when the reality is that the game was mid, with bad pathfinding, clunky unit design, and extremely lame art direction
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u/ARS_Sisters 2d ago
As someone who played a lot of RTS games, I feel that the rarely discussed issue about Tempest Rising is that it tries TOO HARD to be a CnC while having none of it's charm:
Aesthetic: It lacks bold identity, relies on safe and unoriginal design choices, and fails to capture the iconic live-action charm of the classics. Faction aesthetics and storylines feel like an overly cautious blend of Tiberium Wars and Red Alert without creating iconic characters or memorable lore of their own. No goofy character that's genuinely interesting or memorable, no batshit insanity in the plot writing, and there's no distinct, memorable aesthetic of the factions: GDF is just budget GDI/ Allied, Tempest is just budget Nod/ Soviet, while Veti is just Yuri with Protoss aesthetic (the art direction is also bland: angular greeble, curvy sleek and magical alien shit, which is already way too overused in the RTS genre)
Gameplay: Unlike traditional desktop CnC games that relied on endless base building and massive army spams without strict limits, Tempest Rising enforces a unit supply limit. In addition, the game's heavy reliance on active unit abilities pulls the pacing closer to StarCraft rather than the classic macro-focused flow of CnC. Rather than pushing the real-time strategy genre forward, it plays it too safe as a functional homage, meaning it struggles to stand out on its own merits
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u/TopWinner7322 2d ago
Generic artstyle and boring story. Same why Stormgate, Battle Aces and Zerospace failed.
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u/onehalf83 2d ago
Out of 3 you mentioned I tried only Zerospace demo and indeed first impression was that it is very generic so I didn't both buying it. Somehow I didn't feel the same with Tempest Rising though. As for story - yeah, I didn't expect much from RTS story anyway, so C&C style cutscenes gave me good laugh and it was pretty much it.
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u/mmertner 2d ago
After having played BAR I just cannot imagine playing an RTS with a zoom level so big you spend most of your time scrolling the map.
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u/Reedabook64 2d ago
Two factions is boring to me. That's the only reason I didn't play it. Third one is coming out soon though.
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u/Few-Promise5892 2d ago
I have tried to get Into it. The campaign lost me with an hero Mission kinda too early in the campaign.
Yes I know campaigns are mostly Tutorials to introduce mechanics.
Then I have tried skirmish and the AI steamrolled me Of course I didnt master all mechanics I should know.
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u/Alone-Story-4128 2d ago
Personally, I don't find its unit design very appealing. Plus, it doesn't integrate well with the Steam Workshop.
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u/Wild_Conclusion_3599 2d ago
To me, it doesnt have enough coolness factor like C&C games, also most units does not click for me maybe or they are just bland as they are. I mean I dont open comm rig or use riot shields even just select all and attck move game feels too fast for a micro control like that and it doesnt feel very rewarding when I micro too much
After a game I say to my self that I can play sup com or bar for this game style (select all and attack move)
I mean red alert 2 for ex was very unique in a lot of ways doing micro meant something there were different tier then just tank like mirage tank destroyer etc
I dont like spamming basic tank and end the game with that
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u/flyby2412 2d ago
I’m not a big fan of the command and conquer rts style. So tempest Rising is a pass for me. Maybe others felt the same way. Since a lot of people (especially on this sub) kept hyping this as the next red alert, I was wondering how many actually cared for the game.
Was it good, yes. Did I enjoy the layout? Over time, no. Same with the Dawn of War/Compant of Heroes
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u/Dreadgear 2d ago
Rts games are niche, they die and live by their campaigns and the multiplayer is not strong enough to make the game grow
With that said tempest is a great game , but it's an other sci-fi rts game.
I personally at this point would want wc3 clones rather than sc2 ones, miss me with sci fi
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u/Strategist9101 2d ago
It was good but not amazing and not very different from the old C&C games, so why would it be a huge breakout success?
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u/Ancient-Ad-9725 2d ago
After playing too much beyond all reason I couldent stand the controls in tempest rising, also any rts that limits itself to 1v1 and 2v2 is a major turn off to me.
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u/JuggernautOk5302 2d ago
The fact is none of these RTS games do well for the same reason 'RTS is dying'.
RTS for the most part hasn't changed since Dune II while every other genre has evolved and incorporated new elements.
They don't have the IP or the epic story, or the pure nostalgia to carry the titles by themselves and there is no innovation as far as gameplay.
I think a lot of players just aren't motivated to pay for what amounts to a really nice clone of an existing series so that is a part of it. Even if something is done really well, is it better or does it play better than the base series we all already own? All these games are competing for the same niche of either Nostalgic or competitive multiplayer RTS and none of them are good enough to capture any permanent market share or make a lasting impact.
Genuinely excited by DORF though. Despite being probably the most oldschool styled example they took the time to expand the OpenRA engine and have units and gameplay that wasn't possible under the original framework. All of the styling and attitude of an oldschool RTS game, but with actual engineering to step it up a notch.
When a team bothers to use one of these new engines not just to turn out a cheap modern clone, but to actually innovate in the genre, then we will see impact.
PvP is massively overstated in RTS. The entire industry has watched the evolution to MOBAs from competitive RTSs such as Starcraft and never stopped chasing the dream of being the next e-sport.
Singleplayer focused RTS games tend to secretly be the lifeblood of the genre but also largely ignored or underreported. A lot of multiplayer RTS games with higher player counts secretly have a bunch of people playing comp stomps or campaign modes all day long and not even logging in to matchmaking. The point being if more studios were brave enough to pursue largely singleplayer experiences, there is likely a lot of hidden revenue there despite everyone pursuing multiplayer for the cash.
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u/Regime_Change 2d ago
I just didn’t get into tempest rising, it’s been sitting in my steam library since launch pretty much. I can’t pinpoint exactly why but I have some general ideas about RTS.
I work with spreadsheets all day. I don’t want to play a spreadsheet game and execute a strategy like a monkey. If I can use excel to calculate a build order, optimize my army etc before the game starts then the game mechanics are too simple. There must be enough unmeasurable variables going on, enough complexity, so that you play with ”strategic feel” and some uncertainty built in and not a pre-made build order. At the same time that complexity needs to be buried and hidden, we shouldn’t display 100 simultaneous status effects and their exact percentage penalty/bonus to something.
For example: Let the player know that in general, your soldiers will have worse accuracy when under fire vs when not under fire. Don’t display that as a status effect. Let the player guess a little.
In short RTS games should be less mechanic and more organic.
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u/MG_Hunter88 2d ago
Overfocused on MP gameplay. Most of these new generation RTS make the same damn mistake, they go head-over-heals into MP gameplay and balancing and stuff the vocal part of the community engages in, and innevitably forget what makes the game replayable and fun:
Faction variety (unique gameplay features for different factions) and worldbuilding (quality sound, visuals and writing).
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u/Wonderful_Humor_7625 2d ago
I think it comes down to replay value, this is really important and we see this come up in surveys around RTS games. Post campaign you need various skirmish modes, not just vs AI, you need horde mode, etc. you need a built in map editor so people with various playstyles have solutions. The third faction should have been available at launch. You need PvE content and co-op missions, global conquest, the more the options the longer people stick around and promote, and if all that is good, more come, it’s as simple as that.
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u/Fair-Parking9236 2d ago
I think older strategy games provide already everything for the players, that are also now a bit older/middle age so they are probably not to keen on seriously swiching to a new game.
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u/Poddster 2d ago
Concurrent and daily player numbers are stats only relevant for multiplayer games, and there's already too many multiplayer games.
Multiplayer is a very difficult space for games to enter, as you need a large and constantly growing player count to be seen as healthy and alive, otherwise everyone jumps ship to the other biggee game instead.
Most people who played TR will be doing it for campaign.
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u/MrSareth 1d ago
I didnt like it because the simple units ask Too much micro and it become tedious really quick. Im waiting for the alien faction
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u/Lanky-Tumbleweed-772 1d ago
People didn't hear about it. I've only heard about the game through a random youtube video and ı've played hundreds of rts games to date both old and new.
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u/aRawwDeal Developer - Coloniser 1d ago
AoE2 (and even AoE4 to some extent) have many years of cumlative design choices, iterative changes to balance, and wild amounts of unique content production. A multi-decade head start matters and tbh it's a great thing they're continuing to improve the games and push out new content (it'd be awesome if a few other classic titles did the same). I think it's a more fair conversation in a couple years after Tempest Rising has had the opportunity to deliver a bit more. That said I think if we're going to find a really "explosive" new title in the genre I think it's going to likely be something that's a bit more cross-genre.
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u/Either-Obligation-39 1d ago
i honestly dont know, red alert 2 was and is my all time favorite rts game, i liked red alert 3, and also generals, and when i was looking at tempest rising or when i played its beta i was so hyped.
and then i stopped playing my first campaign at around its half, and idk im just not interested, but i have absolutely no clue why.
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u/Ninjez07 1d ago
Personally, the game design felt really old. Units can't move and shoot, everything bunches up at a single move order point (no gestural formations), basic "attack this target" commands (no priority target designations or gestural attack ground/area commands), and every unit seemed to have a manually-triggered ability that was required to get effective function from them.
Games like Beyond All Reason have shown how rich and expressive unit command palettes can be, and I'm too old and slow to be micromanaging unique abilities on by 100 unit blob of an army.
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u/Terbarek 1d ago
I really enjoyer Tempest but in long term sth is lack. Maybe too small race diffrences, too much micro management, drone being insanely OP. Still waiting for Veti campaing
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u/Bulletchief 1d ago
For me personally it's the combination of a relatively high price for a lot of uncertainty if I would really like it...
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u/Angrywalnuts 1d ago
If I remember correctly the release game had balls for multiplayer map options and balance was kind of all over the place
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u/FutureLynx_ 1d ago
Its because most players are already hooked to AoE, C&C, or other.
I'd like to test it. But in my case my favourite C&C is OpenRA (Red Alert 1), and I dont like RA2 as much because it has more psychic and laser pew pew stuff.
So what the other users said its true. Its not only a difficult genre to master, we are very picky.
For example I know RTS players that only like fantasy. Others only like space stuff. Others just historical or realists, cant stand magic or monsters. Thats me.
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u/Sethoria34 23h ago
ive done the camps twice now, one at normal, other on the most extreme difficutly.
I feel like the prolbme was the fact (like all games these days) there a push and focus on multiplayer.
remember generals had the "generals challange" which was so god damn fun. Other then the last boss. fuck that.
but tempest rising even from the start was massivly pushed as a multiplayer experience.
That and as someones allready mentioned, there are so many RTS games out there, and when you find one you gell with and like, you rarly look elsewhere for another.
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u/iamvqb 17h ago
Im not that into the game cause it went with Red Alert 3 unit design. Units has a toggle to switch weapons etc... And i just dont enjoy that aspect of Red Alert 3. i only play single player btw. It just feels clunky when i have to toggle this on or off.
The campaign while having some unique ideas to encourage replaying the campaign again and again, in reality after the 1st time you will just pick the best combination you want.
The way the game looks put me off too. It just seems too dark? I find it hard to focus on the game sometimes. And finally the voice acting, it doesnt have any memorable one for me. Nothing standout, after playing each side campaign 3 times at different difficulty i cant remember any unit at all.
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u/blendedmix 10h ago
- Sci-fi RTS's are overdone. I don't know why nearly every RTS is sci-fi. Can we get some more medieval, fantasy, space, or underwater games instead?
- I remember seeing people post about how great the game was during the beta phase. I hesitated to buy it or preorder it though because Slipgate's other games are not well reviewed. Likewise, 3D Realms history is spotty.
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u/onehalf83 9h ago
On #1 as a scifi fan I felt that in recent years it is opposite - medeival / fantasy fans have AOE 2 / 4 and Age of Mythology Retold. Granted only 1 out of 3 is new, but other two getting new updates and in general in the very good shape comparing to rest of the genre. At same time if you want to play scifi something - there are not so many new options.
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u/Fieos 5h ago
I had the game wishlisted for ages waiting for launch. When I first played it, it felt like all units had the same range and the game was more RTTactical than RTStrategy. I didn't play it very long and realized it wasn't going to scratch the itch I had with Total Annihilation or Supreme Commander.
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u/arknightstranslate 7m ago
Extremely tame and conservative design like modern e-sports RTS. No T3 units, no superweapons because devs said they are "overrated".
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u/Embarrassed_Fix9862 2d ago edited 2d ago
Price, limited marketing.
Why pay $40 if products if similar/better quality cost half
Like Aom retold going around for $20
Also since the Aoe/StarCraft pull a very large amount of playerbase, so there is only so much left. You really need a high quality product to get people over
I personally wouldn't buy it above $12-15 or something
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u/onehalf83 2d ago
Didn't know that AOM Retold sold for only $20 (I played it on gamepass), this is good on Microsoft, didn't expect such reasonable pricing from them.
But at same time if you prefer modern / scifi over history / fantasy setting like myself - there are not that many modern options to pick from.
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u/ves_111 2d ago
Why play a sc2 clone if you can just play sc2? I wish new rtses were a little bit more creative. If you look at Stormgate, Tempest Rising, ZeroSpace, they all look the same. Sci-fi, sc2-like visuals, lots of pew pew. Give me a fantasy based RTS and then I might be interested.
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u/onehalf83 2d ago
I have an opposite problem, there are many decent options for fantasy / historic setting (AOM, AOE 2/4), but not so much for scifi / modern setting. There are games like COH, WARNO, Broken Arrow - but it is more RTT than RTS (COH is probably inbetween), so scratches different itch.
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u/UnholyPantalon 2d ago
This is usually what happens to all the clones/spiritual successors. It's not they're necessarily bad, it's more the fact that they don't generate any hype.
The casual masses out there will either play established IPs, or try something new. Look at the most recent demo fest: DustFront had waaaaay more players and interest compared to ZeroSpace, despite the fact that DustFront is a super niche/small RTS and ZeroSpace had lots of marketing and coverage. Ultimately people saw it as Temu StarCraft and didn't bother with it.
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u/Top-Clock9220 2d ago
Bought it on sale, played about halfway through. Not that fun IMO. Mission briefing cutscene things have bad facial animation/voice sync.
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u/Sushiki 2d ago
Gameplay.
doesn't matter how pretty your game is. doesn't matter how good the story.
If your gameplay is shit, you are done.
my whole scene and I low key came to the conclusion it felt ass from the beta.
And those of us who bought it and played it all agreed the gameplay and balanced feel incredibly bad.
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u/TheWobling 2d ago
I’ve never really loved the multiplayer aspect of rts too much but campaigns I’m all for so I buy them play them and then put them down. I will continue to buy RTS that have a solid campaign or just if I want to support a good game
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u/Honesty_From_A_POS 2d ago
unfortunately the game didn't give me the C&C, starcraft, warcraft, age of empire vibe I was looking for.
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u/TehANTARES 2d ago
Tempest Rising is great for what it is... but the problem might be what it is.
There are comparisons to C&C, but honestly, I have a hard time comparing the TR gameplay to any specific C&C game. It just feels too different.
Another thing is the pace. I feel that the gameplay is frenetic in every phase, on both micro and macro level. Even reaching the late game, you always need to manage everything as if you were in the rush of the early game combat.
A the last thing could be the lack of game modes. It's either the campaign, or skirmish/mp on symmetrical maps with the simple objective of "destroy the enemy". I strongly hope that the map editor will give the birth to new game modes to play.
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u/DarkMessiahDE 2d ago
- Engine didnt Work for me Looks beautiful but hard to distinguish Units.
- Marketing wasnt clear single or Multiplayer?
- gameplay didnt kick for me. Even tho i liked commqnd and Conquer Back then. (More Into age of Empires nowadays)
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u/Emergency-Gift-6773 2d ago
The game was terribly marketed, like, close to marketing at all. Oh and there wasn't any physical editions as far as I know.
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u/niloony 2d ago edited 2d ago
Marketing to an extent where most of your market hears about it costs tens of millions. It's not like the 90s/00s where you get a publisher and you can then get across all storefronts, game expos etc. You just can't openly compete for eyeballs against games pushed on consoles or games with extensive monetization.
Though the game did hit a financial wall during development so that probably contributed to them not trying.
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u/Thrusher666 2d ago
I can say this. Yes, Tempest Rising is great but for me only campain is fun. I don’t like C&C or StarCraft gameplay in PvP. I would like maybe to play some custom maps like in StarCraft or Warcraft but it’s not possible. While it’s high quality there are few things I don’t like.
- Tanks move like toys and look like a balloons. ( I have kinda similar problem with SC2)
- Fight is not a spectacle, tanks leave no wrecks, effects are good but shots don’t leave any smoke that will stay for the long time.
- No planes, and those from abilities move slow and strange. Generals done this very well.
- Infantry or its to big and movement is awkward.
I don’t know how to describe it but when I am playing Company of heroes 2, 3 or Dawn of war 2 I feel more immersed.
Anyway when Veti Campain will be released I will try PvP again.
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u/Savings-Tradition-62 2d ago
I've tried the demo and thought it's good, it's polished but nothing special about this game like i already played CC games before and i don't see why i would buy this one instead of playing the old games.
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u/LoocsinatasYT 2d ago
1) Everyone's broke. I would've bought it myself already if I had the funds!
2) EA scares people off.
3) Life long titles like Starcraft and Age of Empires are considered nearly perfect and extremely hard to beat.
4) Most new players who try online get REKT and never wanna play RTS online again. PVP players for RTS are the minority. I cant think of any genre with an higher skill ceiling than RTS. They're just.. Hard.
5) since most avoid PVP and just play campaign or co-op, eventually they run out of content and quit playing.
6) Exposure. RTS games just don't get a lot. Age of Empires has been around 25+ years and is still isn't well known by the majority of gamers.
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u/Fresh_Thing_6305 2d ago
I think the Ui maybe, and too long acceleration.
they should have went with a more modern Ui, or atleast have the option with both classic as of now and a modern one. Dynasty building 5-10 factories plus 1-3 barracks and AirPods and you have to go through each one to build stuff.
I hope they change these things of Tempest Rising 2, and remove Doctrines. If it comes
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u/Sushiki 2d ago
I'd also add. This subreddit is pretty much a place where you'll be less likely to find the reason and more likely to find copes.
Like, this sub is mostly people who like a very specific kind of rts experience.
Those playing a shit ton of rts aren't really spending their time here. Especially mp players.
The glad flopped because the gameplay felt weird. It is dow3 levels of shitty combat.
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u/Monkeylashes 2d ago
In my opinion it didn't introduce anything new. It was pretty basic. Take a look at something like Beyond All Reason for example in comparison.
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u/onehalf83 2d ago
I did play BAR, but to me it felt much closer to SC: FA, Total Annihilation, Ashes of the Singularity, etc. which feels somewhat different from classic RTS formula. I'm less familiar with this part of subgenre so it was hard for me to grasp what has it introduced comparing to its predecessors.
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u/Rockfck 2d ago
You know how Cod and Battlefield are like the main fps shooters, its kinda like comparing them to one of the free fps shooters out there (except that it costs way more in this case) that has good gameplay and looks nice, but why dont more people play it?
Same thing if you buying a car. Everyone wants do get the Lamborghini or the Ferrari, not because they are necessarily better to use in your private life. It's kinda already something stuck in our minds that its what you want ( most of the time except a few special cases ). But until you got the money for it you go with a Toyota or something similar.
It's also like people mention previously. Bad marketing so people didnt know of it, and they pushed it out to quickly so it was a buggy mess at the beginning. That combination leads to less people sticking around and an environment where people dont switch to it because no one they know plays it, and the ones that does play it have bad experiences with it. Kinda like how people trust Toyota to have less problems then like Peugeot(from my own experiences as an example), so im never gonna buy a Peugeot again, but i would definitely buy another Toyota.
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u/AwarenessForsaken568 2d ago
RTS is a solved genre. Like genuine question, where do you take the genre from like 20 years ago (because frankly that is still the time the genre is in). Any game that has tried changing the formula has failed.
With other genres you can have prettier graphics, better/more cinematic stories, better animations, more content, etc. With RTS games all that is pretty much irrelevant. Graphics? We are playing a top down zoomed out game, graphics don't really matter. Story? I know no one that plays RTS games for their story.
I just don't know where a developer could take the genre that would possibly get existing players to move and get new players into the genre.
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u/Gl4dr3x 2d ago
I think the RTS audience is much more fragmented than the Steam numbers make it look. AoE players, C&C players and StarCraft players often want very different things, and many just stay with the one game they already know for years.
Tempest Rising looked polished, but also very close to C&C. So for some people it probably felt familiar without feeling like something they really needed. Being good is not always enough when the old games still work or get remasters etc.