RhodokMasterRaceOfficial
Arbiter
This is basically everything. People who think otherwise are the kinds of people who say any RTS that isn't Forged Alliance: Forever is "uhh well technically real time tactics by definition." Basically they're the kinds of people that think strategy doesn't exist, even at the same level as "pure strategy" (lol) RTSes like TA, just because the game has a mechanical barrier.RTS games are generally as much - if not more - about the "real time" component as they are about outsmarting your opponent, as evidenced by a lot of people who dismiss Starcraft as "gookclick" because the mechanical level of entry is still quite steep.
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So I don't believe that good RTS games are necessarily "smarter", or that outsmarting someone is the primary component. Killing someone with hidden Dark Templar tech that you prevented someone from scouting? Sure, happens. More often than not though you will also win by just maneuvering your army better, hitting spells better and all that shit.
I think the worst thing though is that those kinds of people will tell you newer RTSes have more complexity in them. How? Because more stuff is automated? Because bullets are stopped by cliffs? But isn't exploiting that fact just micro, which is the devil? When you tell them that everything they say they have to do/think about in whatever shitty game they have as their favourite, is also something you do in brood war, they always fall back on either "but my cliffs block bullets!" or "well the mechanics aren't as hard" because that's basically the only place they can fall back to.
All you have left when you dial back the mechanical/gamesense aspect of the game is build order poker. Brood War does still have a lot of that, but because it's so mechanical, it's possible to still beat your opponent by being better at the game even if you have a build order loss. In any other RTS it's like "oh he hid tech and I didn't see it looks like I just lose then", if anything less mechanics becomes less fair.