Why is StarCraft considered a masterpiece?

[racofer]

keke yer koreans sucky sucky ^_^

 

[DraQ]

 

[AzraelCC]

My point with the three parallels I made with Doom and Starcraft is that both games are refinements of their respective genres, and those refinements elevate them to the status of "masterpieces." I never claimed that the unique narrative and the three races were innovations of Starcraft, in the same way that Doom's weapon variety and horror setting were derivatives themselves.

A new quality - rocket launcher or BFG don't follow from Wolf3D's pistol->rifle->chaingun.

The rocket launcher and the BFG maybe different from Wolfenstein's weapon progression, but they are hardly innovations--they were obviously inspired by existing action games, albeit in the third person and the side-scroller genres.

Nevertheless "pistol, shotgun, more dakka, rocket launcher" order became very strongly integrated into FPS games - it's not popularity, it's that this set of weapons worked so well, that others prefered to copy it, rather than come up with something different or modify it significantly.

Likewise, Starcraft may not have been the first RTS with varied units and structures that differed dramatically. But it was the first to pin the number down to three. One side had flexibility and balance of units and structures. The second side would have tougher units and more focus on abilities and spells but were far more taxing to the economy. The third had speed, maneuverability and cheap units and buildings, but they were weaker and relied heavily on numbers. This structure is unique to Starcraft as an RTS (no RTS has done this before, even the first multirace RTS War Wind had four races, and the mechanics of play was not as differentiated). This became popular also not because of popularity, but because it worked well. Every RTS game's factions/races is either a Zerg (cheap, fast, number focused), Terran (balanced, combined arms, flexible) or Protoss (tough, ability-centered, expensive). Even if AoE2 had more than a dozen nations, each nation can be classified under these three. Age of Mythology, C&C Generals and Red Alert and even Supreme Commander adopted this race balance. Not exactly original, but it was a refinement of something that's been done before, just like Doom taking already varied weapons (albeit statistically) then making it more differentiated.

But balance is not a positive element. It's merely lack of imbalancing units, strategies and situations. It's also a fucking straightforward thing in a competitive game - to make gameplay interesting you have to make sides equal in power. It's not a coincidence that first competitive games - I'm speaking of chess or go here - had sides as identical as possible.

It's not a coincidence, true. But in SC, The context is unique since it isn't tackling balance per se, but balance in asymmetry--something that not even War Wind has attempted before. There are very few games that are asymmetrical in nature since it's easier to construct balance in a competitive game with identical sides. But Starcraft attempts this, and to a large degree, succeeds. How is this not a positive element?

This can attributed to Starcraft dominating the MP RTS market, so again, popularity, rather than game itself.

I have to say that this is a bit presumptuous. If that's so, then Doom's influence on succeeding FPS was simply because of its popularity, rather than the game itself. This is a poor argument, since the popularity of a game can be because of hype, or because it genuinely is a good game. I argued that in Starcraft's case, it's because it's an excellent game, so much so that it improved the quality of succeeding games. C&C prior to Starcraft was also successful in MP, but it spawned pure imatations more than titles that tried to break away from the mold. So there has to be something about Starcraft that made the succeeding games try harder in terms of its quality, compared to the C&C/Dune era.

 

[bonch]

Starcraft is a Korean grind. Modern RTS games have superior unit control and strategic possibilities, while Starcraft is about individually commanding every single unit in predefined build templates to raise your number of actions per minute. It's become another Korean MMO with APM in place of XP.

I remember when the game came out, and it was fun but not seen as some legendary RTS. After the Korean gamers turned it into a grind and kept the game alive for far too long, people assumed that because it's still around, it must be amazing. In reality, there have been many superior RTS games since then with less grind (including Warcraft 3), but the RTS market is not what it used to be outside of Korea, and without the grind they love so much, those better games never supplanted Starcraft there.

Spergy nerds in America started idolizing Korean gamers for their skill at the "sport" of videogames, trumpeting how they're rock stars and convincing everyone that Starcraft is some pinnacle of game design and balance when it's not (e.g., Terrans are still the most powerful race, poor interface and unit control that requires mindless APM grinding, lots of bugs, etc.).

 

[Emotional Vampire]

Starcraft is a Korean grind. Modern RTS games have superior unit control and strategic possibilities, while Starcraft is about individually commanding every single unit in predefined build templates to raise your number of actions per minute. It's become another Korean MMO with APM in place of XP.

I remember when the game came out, and it was fun but not seen as some legendary RTS. After the Korean gamers turned it into a grind and kept the game alive for far too long, people assumed that because it's still around, it must be amazing. In reality, there have been many superior RTS games since then with less grind (including Warcraft 3), but the RTS market is not what it used to be outside of Korea, and without the grind they love so much, those better games never supplanted Starcraft there.

Spergy nerds in America started idolizing Korean gamers for their skill at the "sport" of videogames, trumpeting how they're rock stars and convincing everyone that Starcraft is some pinnacle of game design and balance when it's not (e.g., Terrans are still the most powerful race, poor interface and unit control that requires mindless APM grinding, lots of bugs, etc.).