True! I was using CnC as an example, though - RA was my first experience with RTS.

Pretty much universal critical acclaim (contemporary and retrospect), the only RTS to be included in top competitive tournaments continuously since its release, best selling PC game in its release year, 10 million copies sold overall, still the most played online RTS. I agree that the definition of best is somewhat subjective, but anyone with sense will realise that this is as close to "best" as it gets. And, there's absolutely no wiggle room whatsoever to call SC a "bad" game.



Actually, TA's UI was pretty much revolutionary at the time. It's undeniably more powerful than Starcraft's, no contest there. However, a powerful UI is not very useful for competitive gaming because it detracts from the overwhelm factor.



Strategic decision making is comparatively easy in the context of games. There's only so many decisions you can make, and given unlimited time all strategies will approach optimal. That's why time has to be included in the equation - timed turns in competitive chess or the more dramatic real-time execution of RTS games, for example.

The whole point of RTS games is to include manual dexterity, quick decision making and tactical execution into the overall strategic framework. An RTS player who is capable in all these areas is supposed to be superior to another player who is not as quick on his feet. A game that de-emphasises some of these areas is actually dumbing down the genre rather than smartening it up, since it reduces the skillsets necessary to be successful. Progress can, of course, be made in this area like all others, but a fanatical avoidance of micromanagement is not the right direction.



TA is a great game (I prefer it over Starcraft myself), just not as good a competitive game as Starcraft. TA has more randomness and always had somewhat worse balance, not only unit-wise but in regards to gameplay aspects too. There's also the issue of unlimited resources. The automation, queues and resource accumulation method result in less ways to separate players no matter how you look at it. SC is also superior as a spectator sport with clearly distinctive sides and units.

You could think of Starcraft as a sleek sports car with a ridiculously powerful engine and TA as a luxury limo with a surround-sound DVD theatre and a bubble bath. When you want competition and thrills, you pick Starcraft. When you want to get from place A to place B in comfort and style, you pick TA.



Actually, that's exactly what it means. All else being equal, if you remove or simplify an aspect of a game that takes some ability to execute, you are essentially dumbing down the game by reducing the set of abilities that it takes to be successful at the game.



Depends on how you look at it. For casual play yes, probably. But if you want to separate players in a competition, Starcraft's way is clearly superior - the SC player who is fast enough to produce units continuously but one at a time will have an edge over a player who waits for resources to accumulate, then queues several units at once. All other mechanics being equal, paying over time would remove this edge from the faster player, resulting in a game less suited for competition.

What I enjoyed the most about Starcraft was that you had groups of 12, but could only queue up 5 in a factory. So instead of two barracks producing 12 marines, you had two barracks producing 10 marines, and you had to go back and remind them to build two more.

That was some phenomenal design, let me tell you.

Also, stop saying that Starcraft had 'great reviews'. I already pointed out on like, page 2 that Total Annihilation had similar or better reviews, and that most people were baffled as time went on and couldn't explain Starcraft's rise in popularity.

As for the popularity thing, I've already pointed out that popularity and quality are mutually exclusive concepts. Go watch MTV or listen to a 'pop music' radio station and my point is aptly made.

Polish can OVERCOME a lack in design, but a good game it does not make. Starcraft was a depressingly underachieving game that did nothing for the genre and was a dramatic step back technologically (given that TA came out a year prior, and it took about 5 years for RTS games to reinvent the wheel on some of those). Are you going to tell me that a bit of 'polish' (like...?) is going to overcome the incredible things TA accomplished?

Starcraft was inferior in every way to TA except its multiplayer (as TA relied on the lousy IP-based lobby systems as I mentioned earlier), its customization (this is debatable - I had TA at some point with about 500 custom units per side. Starcraft's success was in that you didn't need to download new maps and mods from a third party to play them), and the single player campaign. Given that Starcraft's sales were pretty average for quite a long time, the campaign didn't cause its rise to success. Balance also didn't, as balance in Starcraft took absolute ages to achieve, but also, Blizzard simply didn't release many patches for it for quite a while either, because this was 'back in the day' where people were on slow connections - who the hell wanted to wait to download a patch every week? Therefore, what did?

I already said Starcraft's success was in battle.net and custom maps. I think one person tried futilely to claim that this was wrong but didn't provide any valid reason. Starcraft is a mediocre game. It's not terrible by any means, but I find it hard to believe the PC industry would be very different today if Starcraft had failed instead.

Counter-Strike is another phenomenally mediocre game that has a ridiculously huge market, mostly based in South Korea. Once again, it's hard to find anything to objectively find of quality in the original game - in fact, the game is notorious for its rather pitiful design. So why is it so popular?

- Popularity snowballs
- Easy access multiplayer
- Runs on damn-near any computer, and were built around high-latency connections.

I think the leading factor for BOTH these games is popularity driving popularity. How many of you have gotten a game because a buddy of yours played it and suggested it to you? How many of you have gotten a game because 'Well everyone else is playing it'? I'm guilty of both.

Once again I'm going to ask someone to explain any other reason why Starcraft and Counter-Strike are as widely popular in Korea as they are, more so than they are in the United States. It's a pop-culture thing, common in many other Eastern enterprises. In fact, the Eastern market is actually pretty infamous for endlessly recycling franchises and failing to ever create anything new. Final Fantasy, Mario games, hell you can drag this out to cover Pokemon, Hello Kitty. Look at 'Eastern' MMOs like Lineage II, they're all practically the same game.

If I wanted to sound like some of the other idiots in this thread, I'd be able to make a pretty good case that the reason people LIKE Starcraft, is *BECAUSE* they're "conformists".

Don't you mean they're not mutually inclusive? If what you're saying is true, i.e. that popularity and quality are indeed mutually exclusive, then no quality product was ever popular. If that's what you're saying, then don't be surprised if a whole lot of people disagree with you. It's also unlikely that quality is inversely proportional to popularity, or vice versa. Sure, there might be exceptions, but check your language use - it might well lead to confusion.

Apologies for the double post, but ability at micro isn't an indicator for strategic skill. By reducing the APM, it could be argued that there is more time for strategic planning, so the game is in effect no longer "dumbed down". Since Sins doesn't have the necessity for high APM (though you can doubtless play it as such), does that mean it's been dumbed down? Nope. Not for me, at any rate.

Queue length is pretty much irrelevant when you get competitive. More than a couple of units in a queue at once equals bad macro. I do agree that it's bad for casual play though.



Starcraft had, on average, higher review scores and user scores than TA, and still has no matter which aggregate review site you look at. So no, most people really were not (and are not) baffled by Starcraft's popularity and the praise it has received. And just to be even, TA also has deserved its praise - just for different reasons. TA made breakthroughs in technology and interface, Starcraft by refining the RTS concept.



Are you really saying with a straight face that something popular cannot also be of good quality? That's a really silly notion, by the way.

Also, it has likewise been pointed out that popularity combined with critical success, financial success and retrospect recognition (=withstood the test of time) are pretty decent indicators of good quality. Actually, I'm having a hard time thinking of any other objective indicators of good quality.



TA accomplished a great deal yes, but the direction was different (catering more towards the casual) and it also had glaring flaws. TA severely lacked personality; the backstory, campaign, art direction and sound effects were horrible even by pre-2000 standards. TA's factions were uninteresting and almost mirror copies of each other. TA had a technological edge, but SC simply had a better presentation because of better art direction and sound engineering. TA's approach to resources and unit balance made it a fun casual game of huge armies clashing together, but it did not have the competitive appeal of Starcraft.



Starcraft was the best selling PC game of the year of its release (1998), with 1,5 million copies sold. Exactly how is that average? Those would be pretty nice sales even by today's standards!

The complaint that Starcraft achieved its balance "slowly" is rather irrelevant. The balance simply evolved as its players got better. Also, even out of the box it was balanced as well or better than any of its contemporaries, with three unique sides to boot.



I'm beginning to think that you have no clue of what makes a good competitive game. CS and Starcraft are simple games at their core, but require a lot of skill to succeed at - CS also requires communication and teamwork. They're both fast and overwhelming in the sense that there's always room for improvement. Both games build complex plays from simple foundations. Accessibility and stability should go without saying - they're prerequisites, not bonuses that players should be thankful for.

All these factors add up to a good breeding ground for competition. Competition, in turn, results in longevity.

CS and Starcraft are indeed popular games, but there's a reason why they're so popular in the first place. They are good games.

That's what I said!

It's 10 years old...what do you expect?

In my opinion, Earth 2150's interface is more clunky...and it's a year later already...

Uranium...are you trying to argue that only bad games are popular? I agree on the eastern market though...too much Lineage clone...but I think you discount game like No More Heroes, Katamari, Dead Rising...

And you're only saying that because TA is better than Starcraft, Starcraft sucks? I know game like TA needs more love, but it doesn't mean that just because you think one is better, the other is total junk...

"Dumbed down" was used in a more generic sense, in the way that a demanding task is made easier to accommodate a larger audience. For example, if player A and player B are completely equal in all other respects except APM, a game that doesn't let player A benefit from his higher APM puts the two players on an equal ground even though player A arguably has a more extensive set of skills. It would be wise for player A to migrate to another, more rewarding, game if he wants to play competitively.

Like you said, the ability to micro (or to think quickly) is not directly tied to strategic skill. A player who's fast on his feet is not necessarily a strategic retard.

Ok; thanks for clearing that up - at least for me
On your last statement, please be aware I didn't intend to say that someone with a high APM count or with fast reactions was bad at strategy - I was just trying to state that the opposite wasn't necessarily true. But you've cleared it up now anyway

Funny how strategic thinking somehow plateaus. If APM is deciding games over strategy, I think that the game fails to allow necessary strategic options. There are just too many startegic options in existance; there's no way "player A equals player B".

Note that this doesn't just apply to starcraft, it's pretty indicative of all RTS games.

I hated TA, but that was because it was highly repetitive and more about pure brute force (which appeals to a lot of people). There are lots of good games that did not appeal to me either because of interface or gameplay. Dawn of war (too much clicking to build and why can't I queue people up if I didn't have the resources) C&C bothered me by not allowing me to build multiple units at the same time. No map editors. Personal preference, but they have done well.

As for Warcraft 3 and Starcraft what really separated them was the editor. Few if any games have triggers. Many still don't. I have played RPG style, racing games, tower defense and several others types of games using starcraft or warcraft 3. This is what really separated these games from their competitors. Also the fact they run on a lot of systems and battle.net was a huge leap forward during starcraft's era. Blizzards humor helps also. Sometimes I just love to listen to the voices.

I do admit Starcraft 2 will be nothing revolutionary. It will be the same formula with an excellent map editor (with triggers) to extend its life. Then again most FPS are pretty similar and haven't changed besides graphics, but people still play them. It will be the mod community and what the map editor can do that will keep it alive.

In the end games that have few competitors tend to do better. They cater to a niche market or do well because there is nothing else like it. Sins of a solar empire and Combat Mission are like this (oddly enough so is the Sims). My bet for computer games this year will be spore only because it has no equivalent competition and can run on a wide range of systems.

Strategic thinking does not "plateau", but in limited systems it does have diminishing returns as more time and effort is spent. It's only sensible to include time (and mechanical) limits for practical reasons, for example timed turns in competitive chess.

RTS games merely take this further by placing additional emphasis on dexterity and quick thinking. There is nothing wrong in the notion that these attributes decide games, even games of strategy, and the success of Starcraft and other real-time games and sports would strongly seem to indicate otherwise.

Placing too much emphasis on dexterity must necessarily remove emphasis from the other, inherently strategic, aspects of the game. I am all for RTSes not being so slow that they are 4x games, but when the interface itself limits your strategic capabilities to the point where whoever clicks fastest and has half a brain wins, it really ceases to be strategic in any meaningful sense; and it really annoys me when games that do allow for more strategic thought get dumbed down in the truest sense because some twitch gamers can't get his their unit rush to the other side of the map in the first 5 minutes of play.

Assuming that the strategic thinking does have diminishing returns, this doesn't mean that APM should be greatly emphasized. What happens when, online, a great strategist comes up against a rather more limited intellect who happens to possess a high APM count and a pre-set "strategy" (whatever it may be)? Assume all else is equal. In theory, shouldn't the strategist win? In practice, is that how it turns out?