upvote
Gratuitous cutscenes, annoying barks everywhere, huge useless animated portraits. It is basically the blizzard polish, looks better than it plays. Not that Starcraft plays bad, but none of the fluff contributes to gameplay. And that gameplay takes a lot more micromanagement than it needs to(some people like this. me, not so much).
reply
It's highly ironic that you've chosen to take this position about starcraft, one of the best playing games of all time.

Like, no, cutscenes have nothing do with improving gameplay, but they don't detract from it either.

The game itself is the epitome of responding to a user's inputs precisely the way they would expect them to.

There's certainly some design decisions you can dislike, (some of which were basically technical limitations) like some of the hot keys and workers not rallying, but those are pretty minor compared to the sheer perfection that is the rest of the game.

You can prefer a different type of game, one where you give high level orders to units or start with an army instead of building it, but that's clearly a very different genre of game and not one that TA and its children are trying to be.

reply
Could you say more on this? I've tried StarCraft a few times over the years, thanks to a lucky thrift store find as a teen. Got a Battle Chest for $10 and the key hadn't even been registered! Never got close to beating it, though. Been a while since last time, but my lingering impression says it was always a confusing sequence of disconnected events taking an agonizingly long time to play out, and the controls were hella clunky and fiddly. I kept trying anyway because something about it feels real appealing, but I don't quite get it. But I feel like I want to get it, y'know?
reply
> Not that Starcraft plays bad, but none of the fluff contributes to gameplay. And that gameplay takes a lot more micromanagement than it needs to(some people like this. me, not so much)

As the gen Zs would say: Skill Issue.

reply
It's an amusing complaint because there's nothing in the TA engine that would prevent players doing the same level of micromanagement as StarCraft, it just never developed that level of skill required to win games.
reply
deleted
reply
None of that has anything to do with why starcraft is popular, though. Starcraft has a long history of organized professional competition, and that's responsible for sustaining interest in the game.
reply
At first people played Starcraft for the campaign, internet access in late 90s wasn't common enough for a game to thrive on mostly online multiplayer. And it was popular back then. And playing on LAN was more of "20 mins no rush" thing.
reply
Starcraft came with battle.net and a mapeditor.

Quake3 was released a year(ish) later and effectively had no single player and it was a major success (by the standards of the day)

Being online was a major, major factor.

reply
Yeah, the TA campaign was... not very compelling.

By the time my crowd had reliable enough connections for multiplayer, the number of people who knew and liked Starcraft from that campaign was much higher than the number who'd either gotten to love TA from the campaign or from vs-computer matches.

reply
So: money, gambling, ego bloating, greed, eye candy, narcotics?
reply
What?
reply
sound (and lack of it) is something that gives aa lot of balance to the game

in brood war you get info when units are made and sounds wben they die. unless an invisible dark templar one shots your units, then no sound

also brood war is the better game

reply