Things that annoy you in RTS games

Pity that asymmetrical maps are inevitably horribly imbalanced. The only question is whether you play at a level high enough to find the imbalance in any given asymmetrical map. Symmetry exists for a reason, and it's because asymmetry has never really been made to work by anyone.

There are ways to do asymmetric balance well. Especially in team games, it can be done well so long as both teams have access to similar amounts of resources at the start of the game.

Planets aren't asymmetrical you choose your starting point, your opponent choose theirs. Symmetry is for the weak. You should be able to choose your tactics based on the choices available to you. I dislike seeing maps where certain builds have an advantage to certain units. Because you know where they're gonna spawn instead of no real clue, this brings out more thoughts in scouting. Instead of seeing what they're doing you're trying to find them. I'm not that good to consider what they're doing a strategic advantage but knowing they're over there can be something I can use

I always hated "rushers", they were the main reason why i never player RTS with random guys.
Always played with friends against AI.

Also i hated "useless systems" like the stealth-buildings in FA - once discovered, always discovered...

The Rock-Paper-Scissor design is also not one of my favorites. Huge Tank hitting Infantry without damage for example.

Faked Realtime where damage is calculated in rounds, but the fights look like Realtime.

And i hate beautiful games without a good hardware support. capped at 2Gb RAM, limited to singlecore etc.

asymmetrical fights can be fun sometimes, but not in competitive battles

The fundamentally conservative mindset of players.

Try new things, you might like them.

This is mostly because most new stuff doesn't work.

Once a way that works has been found, chances are you're not gonna find many more.

I myself like to experiment with stuff but i also find that quickly after finding maybe 2-3 ways the "exiting new stuff" dries up.

New stuff doesn't work if you don't think about trying to make it work. Just throwing new stuff at the fan and waiting for **** to fly is usually how new stuff is made, which is a terrible way to make new stuff.

There you go, illustrated beautifully.

paraphrasing what i said earlier, **** occasionally does hit the fan. It's just that after the initial few shits, it barely happens and people give up. Me included.

I hate it when the unit caps themselves do not reflect what you're playing with. I don't mind having units caps, be they hard caps or logistic caps, but the Zerg should have a much higher unit count at any given point in the game. I guess that's why Starcraft feels so bland to me. The units caps restrict any possibility of the designers to build the game around the epic sense of scale you'd get from seeing a small team of Zealots ripping through dozens of Zerglings just because they're that skilled in combat. They've always pushed that for Protoss 'less is more', but you end up with only a very slightly smaller army due to the bigger food requirements. It should end with Zerg having literally no visible floor wherever they'd spread their creep due to all the units, Terran having extremely balanced army compositions while keeping numbers low, and Protoss having no more than a handful of each tier 1 unit and no more than 2 of anything higher.

I think a more powerful argument is that the feedback is poor. I played some Age of Mythology recently and as the atlanteans you have powerful villagers but they cost like 5 population each. I ended up hitting the popcap really soon but without any real army. Artificial population modifiers like "costs 5 popcap" are just confusing.

True and finding a balance becomes an art in production and useful military units and then advantages such as for protoss the acceleration from the nexus is useful at the beginning but late game it's barely used, Whereas Zerg queens having to constantly inject larvae means you spend 1/4 of your time injecting them. I find that so tiresome

Well yea. As an engineer, i have no problem maintaining a quite complex 3D structure in my head, in an almost Iron Man 3d holo way, but when it comes to RTS games... i am not good at RTS games. I love playing them, but when my attention has to go to several places at the right times etc... my brain just refuses to do that.

It's why i had so much love for TA, and later (in lesser amounts tho) SupCom. It's that i can plan out an entire base and it gets built. No need to babysit a constructor.

After an amazingly brutal game where you are left with a single opponent and you both realise you're both really won, you agree to play it as a game. I remember RA2 where I had reached that point where we could annihilate each other or **** about. Filling a screen with rocketeers for all of a screen for both players and then setting em against each other was hilarious especially being a ***** and sending in one aegis cruiser and a single ifv which both became elites in a second.

There are a couple things I absolutely hate in RTS
1. Superweapons with no counter, you're playing an exciting game until suddenly you see a timer pop-up saying that some kind of nuke will be launched if you do not destroy it before the timer ends. Obviously it's going to be built in the most protected part of the base, your enemy will basically force you to a single strategy, which is attack with full force. A game of sudden death, with odds stacked against you.

2. Bad Pathfinding
In a finished RTS I expect units to take the most optimal path towards their objective. If they get stuck, take the long route or go somewhere else entirely I just rage.

3. A lack of strategic choices.
Poor map design, poor unit design, it doesn't really matter but if it restricts strategy it's going to be bad for gameplay.

Things that annoy me in RTS games:

1. A large emphasis on micro in which clicking very fast or pressing buttons very quickly (i.e APM) is necessary in order to have a chance at victory.
   
   
2. Too many similar units with indistinguishable characteristics.
   
   
3. Units with no counters that are strong or cost-effective.
   
   
4. Lack of true strategic and tactical choices (e.g. where creating the largest ball of units and charging the enemy is always the most effective choice).
   
   
5. Limited variety of game types that can eventually lead to stale/boring gameplay.
   
   
6. Lack of advanced unit controls (e.g. lack of Hold command, or absence of Patrol command).
   
   
7. Units that always rely on player input for any action instead of simulating some level of intelligence.
   
   
8. Simplistic terrain that makes LOS and terrain elevation irrelevant and that has no effect on unit navigation/movement.
   
   
9. Lack of artillery, air, or naval units.
   
   
10. Lack of immersive unit sounds/voices.
    
    
11. Graphics/visuals that are too cartoony or too resource demanding.
    
    
12. Lack of detailed post-game statistics.
    
    
13. Lack of advanced game replay features.
    
    
14. Lack of overall "polish".
    
    
15. Multiplayer matches that are too long.
    
    
16. Game design/features that do not encourage teamwork in multiplayer matches.
    
    
17. Lack of modding support.
    
    
18. Lack of frequent patches and add-ons to increase longevity of the multiplayer community.
    
    
19. Lack of true LAN support.
    
    
20. Overly ambitious design/features that results in many bugs or shallow gameplay.
    
    
21. Bad unit pathfinding.
    
    
22. Lack of game mechanic to quickly end the game once it is overwhelmingly obvious that you have won.

Is this not almost always THE way to win in almost every game ever? Of course, largely limited by such things as the individual unit's range and well, pathfinding?

EDIT: of course, the exception is a more early-game attack without huge numbers

Deathballs didn't happen in TA very much.

Every weapon having (however slight) an AOE component works wonders for making someone spread out their units.

Were not TA weapons also quite short ranged as well?

Indeed most weapon ranges were rather small in TA. However, there was also lots of wreckage around the battlefield at almost any given time, making it hard to form deathballs in the first place and also making it easier to counter them (first row dies -> row of wreckage is created -> units have to spread out to stop hitting the wreckage).