Why is StarCraft considered a masterpiece?

[spectre]

Why is StarCraft considered a masterpiece?

Absolutely no clue here. I always preferred Total Annihilation.
I admit, when I first heard the banter in between missions, I was impressed.
But, one can drool over voice overs only for so long.

You can say that it really shines in multi, but tell you what, I tried both, and still had more fun with TA. The whole "physics" of combat just feel more in place:

You actually get a frontline, instead of "bases".

Modern warfare principles actually apply, radars and jammers are useful - what you cannot se cannot be killed.

No unit is useless and no unit dominates, you actually need to use combined arms to succeed (unless playing with the AI on easy)

Units behave as they should, aircraft behave like aircraft, this always bugged me about starcraft - flyers are ground units that ignore terrain.

I admit, there could be more differences between factions, and the unit design might have been less fugly, but that's cosmetics.

 

[kingcomrade]

I always preferred Total Annihilation until I actually went back recently and replayed Total Annihilation and realized it isn't as good as I thought it was.

Starcraft is a good game, one of the best games. It's considered a masterpiece just because it works. It's fun, challenging (lots of stuff that's important to do), well balanced (in general, don't let SC fanboys feed you shit about perfect balance though, I once got tempbanned from that team liquid site for talking about dark archons and protoss scouts), fast paced. The mechanics work, it's just a good game in general.

Starcraft fanboys are the worst, though. They really are. Most of them recognize that SC is a great game and they are doing their best to ruin SC2 because they have no idea why and are just throwing shit at the wall.

 

[AzraelCC]

Yep, people who think Starcraft is overrated are simply not good at playing the game. Those who claim it boils down to who has the highest APM are retarded. AoE2 was fun, but when it comes to multiplayer, it just isn't balanced enough. I enjoy a nice 8-player LAN game with my friends with AoE2, but I can also have that with Starcraft. And when it comes to playing online, where I want to have opponents who know what they're doing, who are in the lobby with the same goal as mine--test my skill against another opponent and get a true feeling of accomplishment if I win--I always go back to Starcraft.

That's because in Starcraft 1v1 using official tournament maps, there are no excuses. No "Your race was too powerful!" or "My random starting position made me lose!" or "The dice rolls of my units were bad!" No.

You lose because you suck.

Maybe it's Blizzard who keeps providing patches for the game ten fucking years after it first came out. Maybe it's the community who developed a culture of competitive play that forces you to learn the mechanics of the game and continuously perfect it. Or maybe it's those goddamn Koreans. Who cares? For those gamers who keep complaining about a weak AI, play Starcraft multiplayer. All the above possible reasons have made sure that you will get the challenge you're seeking. And if your ass gets handed to you, please don't whine.

You lose because you suck.

For those who think it's an FPS pretending to have strategy, please, just shut the fuck up. The main purpose of RTS games have been to try to simulate strategy implementation in a setting close to real-life--you know, with real-life having time as a factor for your decisions. I play wargames and I love turn-based games, but even the greatest generals didn't think through their plans for 5 minutes in order to have an optimized result. No, they had to make their decisions under fire. So when you're playing Starcraft and you feel it's too fast for you: boo-fucking-hoo. You can't think under pressure, so you will lose. Why do you lose?

You lose because you suck.

In the end, why is Starcraft a masterpiece? Well, how many games give you the opportunity to really test your mettle? Codex is always complaining about console-retardation and making games "too easy." Well, here's a game that's not easy. One of the few games that after you play it and you lose, there's only one explanation:

You lose because you suck.

 

[Berekän]

Starcraft is overrated. I enjoyed AoE2 far more than I've ever enjoyed it.

 

[Destroid]

Wtf is with all the AoE love?

 

[Overweight Manatee]

It's fun, challenging (lots of stuff that's important to do), well balanced (in general, don't let SC fanboys feed you shit about perfect balance though, I once got tempbanned from that team liquid site for talking about dark archons and protoss scouts), fast paced. The mechanics work, it's just a good game in general.

I don't think anyone ever meant to imply that all units are equally useful, just that all races are pretty equally powerful when played by players of equal skill level. Dark Archons are pretty decent vs Zerg in some instances if you can surprise them by gang raping an entire mutalisk force or something then run straight through their base as they shit their pants in awe, the problem is that High Templar/Archons are usually easier and combine better together.

Starcraft fanboys are the worst, though. They really are. Most of them recognize that SC is a great game and they are doing their best to ruin SC2 because they have no idea why and are just throwing shit at the wall.

I don't know whether by "Starcraft fanboys" you are referring to actual decent/good starcraft players or just the legion's of internet trolls, but the competitive community is pretty excited for SC2. The endless threads about MBS and auto mining ruining the game are mostly not being made by anyone actually playing the game.

Wtf is with all the AoE love?

I have no idea. I thought it was a pretty bad series myself, but I only played the original. Do the later ones get significantly better?

 

[aleph]

The main purpose of RTS games have been to try to simulate strategy implementation in a setting close to real-life--you know, with real-life having time as a factor for your decisions. I play wargames and I love turn-based games, but even the greatest generals didn't think through their plans for 5 minutes in order to have an optimized result.

Sorry but that is total bs. In real-life military conflicts strategy is not made up on the fly but planned over a large amount of time. But maybe you are talking about tactics and not strategy...

 

[circ]

I have no idea. I thought it was a pretty bad series myself, but I only played the original. Do the later ones get significantly better?

I think AoE2 is considered the best in the series. Can't remember how good it was myself. AoE3 was fun for a bit, but not that great. I like Rise of Nations myself.

 

[Destroid]

RoN was much better than any AoE in my opinion.

 

[Marsal]

I play wargames and I love turn-based games, but even the greatest generals didn't think through their plans for 5 minutes in order to have an optimized result. No, they had to make their decisions under fire.

You mean by the fire? In a nice office? What army sends generals to make decisions under fire? You've been watching too much Black Adder in WWI. I certainly wouldn't like to be on the side of generals who think through their battle plans in less than 5 minutes. Even greatest of them.

 

[vrok]

Noob thread detected.

 

[Achilles]

Lacking originality?? No other rts before or since has had three such diverse and widely varied factions.

Starcraft is great because it is the total package - an rts that is excellent in all areas.

You are all stupid except this guy. Starcraft is a great game and if you don't like it you can go play some more Mario Kart or whatever.

 

[Azrael the cat]

Not saying that these should make it 'the' RTS, nor intending to argue in the detail required to actually settle that, but a summary of reasons fans would give:
- different sides have vastly different types of gameplay. There's no tanking-unit-1 upgrades to tanking-unit 2. Some races are just flat out weaker when it comes to meat shields, or air defence etc. Some builds force you to play without a meatshield, using manouvering and terrain to make up for it.
- one of the first RTS's to introduce 'clock-time' into competitive strategy. Nowhere near as important as with WC3/TFT, where even as a casual but decent ranked ladder player I'd (and most others at that level) would be going in thinking 'I want the main conflict to be sometime between 3min and 3min 30seconds, and delaying through then. If I don't win by 3:30, I'll want to delay until between 6 to 7min). The reason is that different races have different teching times, different importance on teching, and different vulnerability to being pwned while trying to tech.
- did map control very well so long as you aren't playing on high-resource maps (which ruins the game, as it removes the map control aspect)
- one of the first RTSs to make counter-espionage a major part (again, expanded on in WC3/TFT). No matter what race or build, if a half-decent opponent knows what units you have (or sometimes, what buildings you have) you WILL lose almost all the time, so countering opposing espionage units is ultra important.
- different race styles meant that rather than trying for all-round superiority you'd often be sacrificing, say, air-superiority, or standing-fight ability, for advantages in other ways.
- made a slow start towards introducing gamestyles other than 'build, tech, stand-n-fight'. That part was MASSIVELY improved in WC3/TFT, where some races could not win a standing fight against some matchups at ANY stage of the game (e.g. even when Undead were the most powerful race, they could not win a standing fight against orcs at any time of an evenly matched game, nor could they win a standing fight against humans until tier 3, or after tier 3.5). Hence introducing guerilla warfare (eg again from WC3 - undead were actually imbalanced against orcs for some time, despite not being able to win a standing fight, because of their speed advantage with the Death Knight's speed aura. They could consistently run in, take out 1 or 2 buildings, and piss off again without wasting a town portal, every time the orcs left their base to launch an attack. Wasn't balanced again until the orcs gained counter-guerilla buffs, by buffing their raiders so they could use the snare to take out fleeing crypt fiends).

Unlike WC3, SC was highly intuitive to look at. A spectator watching WC3 will have no idea about what beats what, as there as some truly bizarre mixes of armour types and vulnerabilities. Some matchups are truly counterintuitive - upgraded ghouls + destroyers pwning human knights, rifles and casters? Gryphons not being able to damage destroyers? Mass wyverns pwning mass gargoyles despite gargoyles having insane air-to-air damage and a handful of gargs being able to pwn a mid-size flock of wyverns (there's a critical mass where the focus-fire from wyverns gets too much). Mountain giants being so low damage per food that you're best off literally ignoring them while killing others? Mass frost wyrms sucking, but 1 or 2 being a battle-changer vs orcs (but not against anyone else? WC3 had an absurd learning curve for those who wanted to 'hop in' to ladder matches. To get even a mid server 'level', let alone a really really low 'ranking' on a server you basically had to learn the various damage types vs units, then learn the cookie-cutter strats to get the first few levels, and then learn to ditch the cookie cutter to get ranked from there. Not much fun for someone wanting to just fire it up and play Battlenet.

SC was the exact opposite. If something LOOKS like it will counter something, then it will. No orc casters able to go toe-to-to with melee. If it looks anti-air it will kill anti-air. If it has 'tank' at the end of the name, it will pwn anything on the ground, and nothing else. If it looks fast and flimsy, it will be fast, do decent damage and be flimsy. SC you can be really quite decent at without ever studying a 'unit armour and damage vulnerability sheet' in your life. I hope they learnt their lesson and keep that intuitive 'feel' (where it's clear what is capable of countering what - even if it is left unclear whether it's a soft or a hard counter - rather than making no sense outside of a spreadsheet).

 

[Damned Registrations]

I never really got into standard WC3 games like I did with SC, but that was more because the hero leveling/harassing focused gameplay annoyed the shit out of me. Never really thought about the actual mechanics being so much more obscured. SC has a few things like that, mostly with units that hit twice per attack but don't list their damage as such (Only makes a big difference for zealots and firebats, firebats actually hit 3 times on large enough units, making them oddly effective vs archons) and some units not being the size you'd expect (Mutalisks are small, really? Smaller than hydralisks and vultures? Huge advantage as an air unit, since almost all anti air is explosive and will deal half damage). Most of the other obscure mechanics like dealing half points of damage, calculating a nuke's exact damage, the sprite limit on shots fired occuring before the unit max, or which hero units have better attack animations than the default unit only applies in custom maps.

 

[Azrael the cat]

I never really got into standard WC3 games like I did with SC, but that was more because the hero leveling/harassing focused gameplay annoyed the shit out of me. Never really thought about the actual mechanics being so much more obscured. SC has a few things like that, mostly with units that hit twice per attack but don't list their damage as such (Only makes a big difference for zealots and firebats, firebats actually hit 3 times on large enough units, making them oddly effective vs archons) and some units not being the size you'd expect (Mutalisks are small, really? Smaller than hydralisks and vultures? Huge advantage as an air unit, since almost all anti air is explosive and will deal half damage). Most of the other obscure mechanics like dealing half points of damage, calculating a nuke's exact damage, the sprite limit on shots fired occuring before the unit max, or which hero units have better attack animations than the default unit only applies in custom maps.

I can completely understand why the hero-harassing thing got in the way for many people, but for me it was much of the reason why (despite the obscured mechanics) I loved WC3/TFT as a competitive game (though I preferred SC as a casual LAN-party game). The hero-harassing thing was a game-changer, because the base mechanics of WC3 were such that mid-to-late game base defences were (a) very weak without an army at home, (b) very strong if you had to defeat an army in their own base. I always picked hit-n-run races that couldn't win standing fights (put it this way: I HATED the update where they buffed the hell out of abominations - not that they were ever used except vs nightelf anyway - but I loved the fact that the undead just could not win a standing fight, at any stage of the game vs orc or human. Harassing gave those builds/races one more option for delaying army-on-army contact (which would result in a quick loss against an opponent that could avoid your ghoul hero-surround or stun+focus-fire (and that ghoul 'surround the hero and kill really quick with buffed damage' is really a defensive strategy, trying to force a town portal by an otherwise more powerful opposing army, who you SHOULD have harassed to draw them away from the base anyway). But forcing an opponent to TP meant they had to fork out 350 for a new scroll, and unless they already had a settled expansion ahead of you (in which case you've already lost unless you're in the process of pwning it hard) that should mean that they can no longer economically afford to throw another wasted attack on you like that.



It did require more micro than any strategy game should have though - in particular you needed to be able to harass with a DK+wand of necromancy (to snipe NE wisps or better, snipe human peasants and use the wand to raise them as skelies), while creeping using ghouls + cannibilise + sending injured ghouls back to lumber. Micro at that level should be abstracted out, imho, as micro abilities should never be a pre-requisite for particular strategies to be viable.

 

[reaven]

The game is nothing special in my opinion, but its the same blizzfags thought diablo 2 was the best rpg ever, until wow arrived. I guess most people think starcraft is a masterpiece because it has that fame, even if its nothing but a rts that did nothing new. Balanced ? well it got quite a long time to become balanced, years and years of patching, didnt it ?.

 

[Zed]

RoN was much better than any AoE in my opinion.

Rise of Nations was pretty fucking good. But not better than AoE2. Better than all the other AoEs though, and much better than Empire Earth.

I want to play Rise of Nations now... torrent time!

 

[dx__]

I want to play Rise of Nations now... torrent time!

This.

 

[AzraelCC]

You mean by the fire? In a nice office? What army sends generals to make decisions under fire? You've been watching too much Black Adder in WWI. I certainly wouldn't like to be on the side of generals who think through their battle plans in less than 5 minutes. Even greatest of them.

You've been limiting generalship to its literal, albeit modern rank assignment. I'm sure Napoleon, Alexander, Lee and a host of other generals prior to modern warfare will disagree.

 

[aleph]

You mean by the fire? In a nice office? What army sends generals to make decisions under fire? You've been watching too much Black Adder in WWI. I certainly wouldn't like to be on the side of generals who think through their battle plans in less than 5 minutes. Even greatest of them.

You've been limiting generalship to its literal, albeit modern rank assignment. I'm sure Napoleon, Alexander, Lee and a host of other generals prior to modern warfare will disagree.

Yeah, the great generals of the past did not plan beforehand and commanded directly every single soldier.Seriously, you must be retarded if you think RTS (Total war games not included) games have anything to do with real warfare of any time period.

 

[Jaime Lannister]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dakQkhOGiNQ

because it has a lot of badass multiplayer moments and it's one of the few games as fun to watch as it is to play

 

[MetalCraze]

Starcraft is not a masterpiece it's just being played by lots of people. And it's one of the better "typical" RTS'es.

 

[Derper]

Starcraft is not a masterpiece it's just being played by lots of people. And it's one of the better "typical" RTS'es.

Nice to have you back. Really.

 

[snoek]

I like TA and cossacks waay better!

 

[Derper]

I like TA and cossacks waay better!

+1