In my opinion Starcraft 2 killed RTSes (just like Dota 2 and LOL killed MOBAs).
With multiplayer games people can play the same title forever if it's deep enough. So new games in the same genre have to compete against a game that was made by Blizzard in 2010 and constantly developed ever since.
So what happens is - people check out the new game, and either get bored (it's too similar and worse) or get discouraged (it's too different to bother learning).
The only remaining market for RTS are so called "casuals" that want single player experience. But they don't engage with the game enough to justify years of gameplay development, balancing, innovative mechanics - they mostly want nice cutscenes and good graphics and beliveable dialogs and plot.
And most of them won't even finish the game. They will play for a week and move on. Single player games that don't achieve cult status - are finished on the market after the first month.
So for a new RTS to compete it has to be better than Starcraft 2 in multiplayer and gameplay or at least in storytelling. And that's a VERY hard thing to do for an indie studio. Risk is huge and required investment is enormous.
I've had high hopes for Iron Harvest and it clearly went for the casual/single player market and did pretty well, but not well enough.
Trying to appeal to a very small number of people that are still playing multiplayer SC2 and think of SC2 as the gold standard for RTS is a dead end. SC2 fundamentally failed with their multiplayer design due to their irrational focus on the esports and competitive aspects of multiplayer. The point of multiplayer isn't to allow hardcore fans to find ways to enjoy the game for 10+ years. The point of multiplayer from the developer's perspective is to lure in casuals and create a network effect (all my friends are playing X, so I'm gonna also learn and play X). It's more important for multiplayer games to be accessible to new players than single-player campaigns because it's part of your growth flywheel and repeated failures are easier to deal with when you're playing by yourself but SC2 gets this completely backwards. Competitive multiplayer is absurdly challenging for new players, while single-player campaigns are significantly easier even at the hardest difficulty settings.
1. competitive (Starcraft, DOTA, LOL, CS:GO, etc.)
2. low skill ceiling (usually thanks to significant randomness - see Hearthstone)
3. no skill-based matchmaking (for example in Warthunder AFAIK matchmaking is based on the vehicles you drive not on how often you win your games)
4. party games (you play with the same people repeatedly - see Among Us)
Option 1 discourages casuals, but makes for games with high engagement. People still play starcraft 1 broodwar and age of empires 2.
Option 2 is best suited for casual/mobile/pay2win market. It can work for the game developer, but I consider it a dark design pattern aimed at extracting the maximum amount of money from addicted people (usually kids).
Option 3 is weird - people don't care about winning games in Warthunder, they only care about killing enough enemies to get virtual money to repair and upgrade their tanks. It's also heavily pay2win because the best vehicles for their matchmaking rating can be only bought with real money. But few people care about winning so I guess that's fine? Also it's not mainly marketed to kids so I'm more ok with it.
Option 4 is the best because anything with friends is fun. But you have to have friends who are into it.
Among Us took of recently after years of barely surviving (probably thanks to the quarantine). But most multiplayer games that do well for years after the release are highly competitive. I don't think that's an accident.
People play multiple fighting games all the time though and they're as deep as SC2. FGs all have distinct flavors to them which people seem to like. Different resources, tag team vs not, 2D or 3D, zoning-oriented vs pressure-oriented, etc
Social networks are supposedly different in that the _new_ users (i.e. teenagers) are actively trying to _not_ share a platform with previous users (i.e. parents and people older than 25 in general)
With multiplayer games people can play the same title forever if it's deep enough. So new games in the same genre have to compete against a game that was made by Blizzard in 2010 and constantly developed ever since.
So what happens is - people check out the new game, and either get bored (it's too similar and worse) or get discouraged (it's too different to bother learning).
The only remaining market for RTS are so called "casuals" that want single player experience. But they don't engage with the game enough to justify years of gameplay development, balancing, innovative mechanics - they mostly want nice cutscenes and good graphics and beliveable dialogs and plot.
And most of them won't even finish the game. They will play for a week and move on. Single player games that don't achieve cult status - are finished on the market after the first month.
So for a new RTS to compete it has to be better than Starcraft 2 in multiplayer and gameplay or at least in storytelling. And that's a VERY hard thing to do for an indie studio. Risk is huge and required investment is enormous.
I've had high hopes for Iron Harvest and it clearly went for the casual/single player market and did pretty well, but not well enough.