So if you look at the real time games usually going on they have one of these three settings enabled, Local Deployment, No Split mode, and non-default kill rates. My question to the warzone community is why are these games so popular? They all seem like giant pain in the ass and seemingly no games anymore have the pure skill trait to them.

Strat templates are too difficult and rarely feature light fog which makes the game so much better

The problem with strategic templates, is that you are much more likely to run into a semi-decent player and get your butt handed to you. It can also be hard to focus on one template to learn the basics of good gameplay. This really sucks if you are new. Its boring.

I would argue that light fog is more helpful for larger games. Normal fog gives strategic games much more complexity, and requires a lot more thinking. It definitely hurts accessibility though.

"So if you look at the real time games usually going on they have one of these three settings enabled, Local Deployment, No Split mode, and non-default kill rates. My question to the warzone community is why are these games so popular? They all seem like giant pain in the ass and seemingly no games anymore have the pure skill trait to them."

I really don't like those games either. I used to see a lot more pure-skill and manual distribution games around. A lot of the people (that I remember) who used to play those are inactive/clanned up and not playing open lobbies anymore. QM also drained a lot of activity from the RT lobby. Its also boring for decent/strong players to go up against people with no idea how to pick - so autodistribution levels the playing field somewhat. (I know you didn't mention this, but I'm sure its related)

I think a lot of the people left in the RT lobby just want to make an empire. Nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't mesh with normal styles of gameplay.