I haven't really played any bad RTSs, mostly because I research pretty much every game I intend to buy to make sure I'll enjoy playing it (of course, occasionally I miss, but usually the game is enjoyable for the most part). However, I can tell you some things that would ruin the game for me:
- Imbalance: Different races/teams need to be balanced, otherwise there's no point in playing the weaker one (unless you really want a challenge), especially in multiplayer
- Poor AI: If you only play single player, an unintelligent AI will make the game boring, pure and simple. Games need at least a bit of challenge to hold your interest long term
- UI (user interface): For RTSs, UI is very important because there are often numerous units on screen at once, and they will often be pretty small. There simply must be a good method for finding, selecting, and controlling any number of units.
- Graphics: While not as important as the other things, graphics are still important for the same reason UI is - units are likely to be small, so you'll need to be able to tell what type of unit something is by looking at it. Clearly made models/sprites are thus pretty important.
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