Comment by PorciiVorbesc
1 day ago
>His games don't have the fluff people appear to love(looking at you starcraft)
What fluff (of Starcraft) are you referring to?
1 day ago
>His games don't have the fluff people appear to love(looking at you starcraft)
What fluff (of Starcraft) are you referring to?
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).
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.
> The game itself is the epitome of responding to a user's inputs precisely the way they would expect them to.
I have to admit my experience lies mostly in Brood War, and surely "the game responds intuitively to user inputs" is not one of the ways you'd describe it? That game is notoriously clunky in how it handles user input, both in terms of selection limitations, unit path finding, etc.
Don't get me wrong. I love Brood War. It's the only competitive video game scene I've really cared about. But I love it for its clunky user experience (which requires mechanical mastery in addition to a sound tactical mind), not because it's so smooth.
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?
8 replies →
> 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.
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.
1 reply →
As Boomers would say: Mayfly Attention Span.
Starcraft is EXQUISITELY optimized for e-gaming and streaming. That means short games and relatively small maps and relatively small numbers of units and "snowballing". Small advantages from a micro battle or macro organization multiply quickly into an inexorable avalanche. It's why Blizzard has to CONSTANTLY jiggle things to bump the meta around.
Supreme Commander, by contrast, tended toward larger maps. Your Tier 1 unit rarely could find the opponent before they were already laying out Tier 2 buildings. Battles had ebb and flow and RECLAIMING after a battle occurred meant that if you survived a battle, you now had material to rebuild and possibly more than the person who launched the attack. The game was more homeostatic than avalanche. But that doesn't tend to make good e-gaming or streaming fodder for ADHD teenagers.
And the interface differences are MASSIVE. I could go on for HOURS about why I LOATHE the Starcraft interface and love the Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance one (and similarly Beyond All Reason). But, that's a personal preference thing.
2 replies →
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.
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.
4 replies →
So: money, gambling, ego bloating, greed, eye candy, narcotics?
1 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