[plushpuffin]

Back when I played it, there was a 50 game skill test for new players which determined which of the major rank pools you were placed in.

Those first 50 games were crazy because you were matched randomly with other new and established players, so sometimes you would play someone really good who would steamroll you in the first 5 minutes, and sometimes you got someone who had at most played the scripted campaigns against the AI and thought they could sit there for the first 30 minutes slowly building up an army.

It was actually pretty fun not knowing which way it would go, and whenever we matched with newbies my partner and I got to experiment with a bunch of different strategies that would never work in a real game.

[babypuncher]

> played the scripted campaigns against the AI and thought they could sit there for the first 30 minutes slowly building up an army.

This right here is my fundamental problem with multiplayer RTS games. The fun I get out of them is in the slow burn long buildup, but other players always find ways to optimize the early game so they win fast and never actually get to the fun part where everyone has massive bases lobbing nukes at eachother. The fun way to play is not the optimal way to play.

It's now been about 10 years since I've even bothered trying an RTS online.

[zemvpferreira]

I don't mean to be rude (I'm a very bad Starcraft II enthusiast) but most people who complain about this problem seem to want to play a solo game for 30 minutes and then eventually meet the other player in the field of battle at the half-hour mark. That's an obvious no-go, you can't ignore 90% of the game and expect to have fun.

The way to beat players who play strong openers is to play a strong opener yourself, but not necessarily all-in aggressive. If you want to get to the late game you enjoy you must get better at the early game. Harass the other guy early, scout their build, make sure you're building counters to what the other player is playing. Defend well. Deny their economy here and there. Inevitably crush them with nukes and capital ships after 30 minutes of solid fundamentals.

(Starcraft is still a lot of fun and I'd encourage you to get back in to RTS playing)

[ptudan]

I used to play Age of Empires in treaty mode. You had XX minutes where you couldn't attack one another so just focused super hard on macro. Utter chaos when the treaty period ended as everyone had max size armies. Lagged the hell out of my computer. Good times

It was a fairly popular variant of the game too, never had trouble finding matches

[plushpuffin]

Yeah I've felt the same way at times, especially when the armor/weapon types make it very rock paper scissors. It wasn't as blatant in the original StarCraft, but WarCraft 3 and StarCraft 2 seemed to go hard into counters against certain types of units, so someone who either scouts a bit better than you do or picks an army composition that happens to perfectly counter yours will mop the floor with you.

My partner and I had way more fun in those early games when we could stretch it out to 30-60 minutes sometimes. Once you're playing against ranked people who are there to win it's just a mad rush to the first or second tech tier.

[pradn]

There's a game mode in AoE2DE where everyone's behind strong walls at the start. It takes a while to be able to bring them down. So you get to turtle for a while. A game mode like this is what you'd like to play.

[htag]

It's more like 10 or 15 games before your MMR is pretty accurate.