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Related to e-sports, the decline of RTS games.

Well, frankly, I can't be sure, maybe there are lots of great single-player RTS games still coming out, but it was Starcraft 2, and partly already Warcraft 3, which made me feel that now at least the most prominent RTS games concentrate more on online e-sports scene, than being excellent single-player campaign experiences.

When I launched Starcraft 2 to play its singleplayer, I was still bombarded with the online e-sports aspect of it. It was like the game was talking to me "Welcome, e-sports fan! Here are the latest online league rankings... oh, you came here to play the single-player campaign? <sigh> Whatever, it is through that backdoor, somewhere, go there you will eventually find it, maybe...".

I think that "online e-sports" aspect is also the reason that "modern" RTS games quite often seem to lack features like the ability to slow down the gameplay at will to crawl (if there is lots of happening at the same time that require your attention), or even pausing the game to give commands. Naturally you can't do those on online matches against other humans, so they seem to be dropped from single-player as well.

I also feel like "skirmish" mode is a mere single-player training for online e-sports, so if a RTS game has a skirmish mode (only), I don't necessarily consider it a single-player game. At this point I am expecting some kind of proper campaign with missions of increasing difficulty and complexity.
Post edited November 23, 2020 by timppu
It drives me nuts that companies like Konami have tons of IP's under their belts and do nothing with them. They don't ever sell off or loan them out, so they languish in a prison made of copyright.
Ultima series:

Every game in the Ultima series (except the first, for obvious reasons) has some aspect that is handled worse than in a previous game in the series.

For example:
* Ultima 4: Reagents are needed for casting spells, which really does make things less fun (especially when looking at spells like Missile and Open, which were decent in Ultima 3 but now useless because of the reagent requirements (well, and Cure being as cheap as it is). Also, the classes are not as balanced as in Ultima 3, even if you don't count the Shepherd (why can't the Fighter use any ranged weapons that will actually work in the Abyss?). (Also, they took away one of the gender options.)
* Ultima 5: Ranged weapons (except the strongest one) now have limited ammo. Also, the Shadowlords will sometimes appear in town, so you then need to rest until the next day before you can do your town business (and hope the RNG doesn't put a different one in the town). Furthermore, the game's approach to leveling is atrocious: Even after earning enough XP, you need to rest, hope that Lord British decides to appear during the rest, then all you get is +1 to a *random* stat (made worse by the absence of the stat boosting orbs that Ultima 4 had). There's also the fact that some of the game's text (including, for example, the coordinates given by the Sextant), are in a strange Runic alphabet that makes it mandatory to look it up during play.
* Ultima 6: The change of scale now makes the world much more of a pain to navigate (mitigated somewhat by the Orb of Moons). Characters now have separate inventories, so you now need to worry about who's carrying what (yes, they brought that back from Ultima 3). Also, I'm not aware of any repeatable ways to gain Karma, and apparently you do need a minimum amount to beat the game, which can make the game unwinnable. Another issue is that the main character is the only decent spellcaster you get; Mariah is not recruitable, and Jaana can't use magic (and there's no explanation about why).
* Ultima 7: The combat system was completely ruined by the change to real time; at this point, it feels like the only way to influence the course of a battle is to cast a spell. The inventory system is even worse than Ultima 6's. Furthermore, food is handled in the worst way possible; you now need to manually feed your characters or they'll take starvation damage, and doing so requires you to go into the inventory to find a food item, then use it on the character. (Ultima 6 was much better here; food is only consumed when you rest, and it happens without you having to dig into your inventory to find the appropriate food item.)
* Ultima 7 part 2: Too much dialog. Furthermore, it's a while before you get a spellbook, which makes the combat issues (carried over from Ultima 7 part 1) even worse.
* Ultima 8: Haven't played it, mainly because they took away the option to make the avatar female. (This flaw carries over into Ultima 9 as well.)
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Reyold12: It drives me nuts that companies like Konami have tons of IP's under their belts and do nothing with them. They don't ever sell off or loan them out, so they languish in a prison made of copyright.
Or more insultingly, making cute winks to them in the glove of a franchise they inherited, such as all the various character bombers in Bomberman R. They dropped a freaking Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom bomber.
Frames Per Second are over-rated.

RPG's are boring!

Edit: redacted .
Post edited November 26, 2020 by Dark_art_
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timppu: When I launched Starcraft 2 to play its singleplayer, I was still bombarded with the online e-sports aspect of it. It was like the game was talking to me "Welcome, e-sports fan! Here are the latest online league rankings... oh, you came here to play the single-player campaign? <sigh> Whatever, it is through that backdoor, somewhere, go there you will eventually find it, maybe...".
Are you talking about the launcher? I hardly looked at it.