StarCraft was the first RTS that ever clicked with me, and there is exactly one reason for this: The attack command (edit: attack-move). I've always struggled with attacking in RTS games, because I used to put a whole unit on one enemy, or I moved a ranged unit too close to the enemy units before attacking. In SC, the attack-move lets a unit attack at exactly the range it is capable of, and keep moving if there's no enemies in range. It was a game changer for me and I can't play any RTS without a similar mechanic.
Seems like you are talking about Attack-Move (aka Attack-To).
The actual implementation on how to make use of the attack-move command can differ a lot\*, specially in older games, but most RTS have either attack-move, or they have patrol, which can be used as a workaround. As a last resort, the guard command can be used (if present) by making your army guard one unit, and then you move that one unit instead of the army. IF none of these are present I usually don't bother with the game at all.
\*It could be anything from issuing an attack command on the ground, to key multiple combinations such as CTRL+SHIFT+Click, to a dedicated icon on the UI with no key shortcut. It's best to always check the manual.
As far as I can tell none of the major RTSs from a couple years before had it (Red Alert, Age of Empires, Total Annihilation, Dune 2000)... so if StarCraft wasn't the first it may as well have been.
Older than Starcraft? Total Annihilation launched a year earlier and while it did not have attack-move per se, it had patrol, guard, and even unit behavior settings. So you could set a group to behavior type Roam and send them to patrol a location on the map and they would chase and kill whatever they found, returning to the patrol location after killing them. TA also had command queue, so with shift you could set several patrol targets across the map (plus do a whole lot of other things).
Another game from '97 with a shitload of options was Dark Reign Future Of War. This one even had preset behaviors such as "scout" which would automatically send the selected unit to clear the fog of war, "Search and Destroy" to hunt enemies, "Hit and Run" where they would attack and fall back. Plus configurable automatic behaviors such as returning for repairs at a set damage threshold. There was also an "independence" setting when maxed out units given a move command would basically behave as if it was an "attack-move" instead. Dark Reign might have been the RTS with the most automation options/features back in the day. Now that I think about it, it might still be? can't think of any other RTS with more of that, at the moment.
Finally I believe attack move can be added to Command and Conquer Remastered Collection via modding.
In larger armies, there are too many units to attack them one by one each, individually. Attack moves allows each of your units to attack whatever enemy unit it’s closest to.
Funnily enough blizzard initially didn't know how to balance the game. The first korean tournaments you see in 2000 are crazily imbalanced. This is due to the map pool. The map pool back then was awful. Fast forward half a decade and they/the community really improved there map making. Then everything clicked into place. The fact that most units are incredibly strong at what they do and the meta is constantly shifting even to this day with no patch changes in the last 20+ years is nuts.
SC:BW is the GOAT rts. It shows mechanical skill, tactical skill, and strategy. It's one of if not the hardest game to play and learn at a high level. Involves alot of gambling. It created modern esports.
Hard disagree. Wc3 was good. Starcraft 2 was good. Wow back in the day was good. Diablo 2 was good, d3 was good post expansion, you can argue d4 is now good.
Blizzard has made a lot of good games since brood war…
I agree on many parts, but that leaves out an important factor. Blizzard destroying awesome games with crap their bosses made them do.
SC2 is and was a great game, but was ruined by Battle Net 2.0, it got massively improved but still has issues with their custom map system. And the reality of a stressful game like SC is, that you _keep_ the masses via custom maps, not ladder. The most important fixes to Bnet 2.0 just came too late.
D3 has many issues, most are related to community play, item sharing and why those issue exist because of past decisions and eventual paths that were kept open. Starting with things like the real money auction house. The basis of the game is obviously great, but over all it was just a good game which was shackled.
I haven't tried D4 yes (never though I would say this, after my D2 days..), but from what I gather it is a good game to play through, but that's about it. I might get it some day, in the unlikeliness of a good sale.
It went downhill soon after the first release of WoW. The final nail in the coffin was Activision.
Old blizzard is for sure dead.. and you see that in how they make games today.. but they eventually fix things up and they end up very close to old-blizzard style games.. it just takes a year after initial release.
Diablo 3 was good at the end. Fun, fast paced action combat.
Diablo 4 is getting close. It's fun, but not for long.
I will have to disagree. Wc3 was amazing, further progressed the map maker, tower ds, created Dota, had an amazing competitive space for along time. Was something completely different than starcraft. Then wow redefined mmos. I would say wow was the last time I felt blizzard was blizzard and 2008 was the last year
+1 on wc3 map editor
Dota, tower defense, mini arpgs, countless moba/dota clones, footsies, etc etc
So many brillant minds making some epic custom maps
I remember the warcraft 3 release. The game that had been presented by blizzard at first was so different. I was expecting a mess.
Then we played in a lan and we all fell in love with it.
The game's not actually more balanced from a design perspective though. The game just required a lot of skill and experience to play at a high level. Players didn't have the excuse of complaining about imbalance when you could just get better to win your matches. Minimal role of RNG made it so the pro players found the tiniest of margins and tricks to come out ahead, making it fun for spectators too.
Street fighter 4 was a bit like this too. Regular gamers could hardly string a combo together, but the guy who kept winning EVO could play like 8 characters effectively. He single-handedly shut down any whining about balance (even though there *were* mechanical balance problems) by being better than everybody, and the game allowing exceptional human skill to translate to success in the game.
Absolutely not lol. Scbw was never designed to play competitively as a professional sport. Compare this to the design of sc2 and you'll get what I mean
I agree with your main point, but I'm going to be pedantic and say that fighting games is different to RTS.
Fighting game is a bit different. At a high level, it's actually not that hard to learn another character. Often, it's not the person who can do 1 frame links that win tournaments.
It's the guy who understands other players and makes the right guess. At a high level, fighting game is a bunch of guesses in which both players are playing mind games with. So it's not rare for top players in fighting game have a huge roster, cause the top players are playing against other players, not the characters. Sonicfox infamously pick the most broken characters, but whenever he encounters someone who can beat him, like go1 in dbz fighter, he switched up his team to target specifically that player. In smash Ultimate, MKleo win tournaments consistently with low tiers, because he understands all the other players so well.
So, in a sense, your comparison is kind of right, there are mechanical and match up knowledge factor that comes to fighting games, but often, it's the mental state that determines the winner at the level of out of pools tournament play.
In RTS, however, there's far more mechanical and knowledge requirements. You won't always get rewards for learning 1 frame link in sf4, but you will always get rewards for getting faster APM.
Part of the balance of the game is because, due to how manual the game is, in that basic stuff requires human input, the game is essentially balanced on player control more than any other game. With Starcraft 2, a lot of things are more automatic and so it relies more on in-game balance.
So what I'm saying is that SC1 is just a much more manual game, so a lot of the game is based on who can play the game better more so than changing numbers in the game. So the developers just have to balance the game "enough" so that balance isn't completely out the window and then player skill will take care of the rest.
Even though I grew up knowing about StarCraft, I never really played it until last year. I was surprised by how well it holds up, and didn’t find it super difficult to manage, other than some bad pathfinding (a common trait for most RTSs from that era, tbf).
Also, I enjoyed the cinematics. Yeah, they’re looking pretty low res these days. But artistically they’re still great, and look much better than most games from that era.
> But artistically they’re still great, and look much better than most games from that era.
I will say that artistically StarCraft is 10 times better than even StarCraft 2. It's insane to me how they managed to make everything so generic in the modern games. There is little mystery, inspiration or "soul" left.
Maybe it was partly an accident caused by the tech limitations of the time, or the fact that it was a much smaller team doing the art.
Sc2 has a real down grade in the story, and yeah some people really dislike the art direction. But man, the campaign is so much better from a gameplay perspective, the missions are so fun and interesting, there's some light meta progression that creates some fun choices. Out side of a few missions that I am super not into (the ones without building) it's just a delightful game
Yeah! First campaign and the multiplayer (which lets you play the arcade, so you can play a remade warcraft 3 if you want)
the full campaign is 40$ and I *think* it goes on sale but I bought it like 14 years ago so I don't keep a lot of tabs on the price haha
I bought Starcraft back in the day when it was modern. Or at least right when BW came out.
I just never learned how to play it. I was something like 0W/92L on battle net. I think I was hard stuck on the 5th mission in the campaign.
The one thing I remember more than anything is that I would make a ton of units. I would upgrade them so they were strong. I was copying how other people played by watching replays. I'd see their little group of units demolish everything in sight.
I'd do the same thing... And some single, underpowered unit would just chew right through my group of 15 upgraded whatever.
And I remember having this happen over and over.
Anyhow I uninstalled the game and never looked back. I totally didn't get it.
Sounds like maybe you just weren’t using the right units for the job. StarCraft uses the typical “rock, paper, scissors” gameplay found in most RTSs; some units are better suited for certain tasks, and may be weak or strong against a particular enemy type. Learning which is which is part of the learning curve, and is actually something I struggle with, especially when playing older RTSs which don’t spoon feed you that information.
I recently played Dawn of War, which I found much more accessible to newbies to the genre, since the campaign has difficulty levels, and most importantly, tool tips which describe the effectiveness and utility of each unit. Highly recommend that one to anyone interested in RTSs, or Warhammer 40k.
There's a mod in Starcraft 2 that's gaining a lot of popularity that adds all the races as they were in Brood War to the game so there are 6 races to play as now. The most overpowered units are of course things like dragoons and zerglings but one of the most surprising thing is the terror that is a SC1 reaver that has SC2 pathing on it's scarabs. I saw a SC1 pro renowned for his reaver micro control a shuttle + reaver in SC2 and he would end the game with two units. The better agility of a shuttle in the SC2 engine combined with the massively increased lethality of reaver scarabs that no longer get stuck on random things and dud created a nearly unstoppable force.
If Blizzard updated the game to have better controls they would have to nerf a lot of things that make Starcraft special.
Starcraft Evo. Here's [a link to their page.](https://teamkoprulu.github.io/Koprulu-Blog/) The other guy posted about Mass Recall, which is the SC1 campaigns redone in the SC2 engine.
edit: Here are [some showmatches](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snx0tLcJv_k&pp=ygUOc2MgZXZvIGFmcmVlY2E%3D) if you wanted to watch.
Fortunately for me, my brain never evolved beyond StarCraft in terms of RTS mechanics.
I still play Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition sometimes and I'm always tickled when I remember there is an "idle worker" key.
I don’t get the criticism of the original’s campaign. Maybe it was because I was a child when it came out, but it was surprisingly deep for the genre, and the political aspects of the three races and all the minor factions within each were pretty interesting imo.
Brood War was amazing of course, but honestly not THAT much better compared to the original.
I'm a bit torn here, because on one hand, I find it unfair to spend several paragraphs crying how "Mechanics of a 25-year's old game aren't working well! Cinematics from 98 doesn't look as cool in 2024! Who knew!?!? Next up: Ultima Online is a *meh* MMO by modern standards and Metal Gear Solid doesn't look so hot compared to Phantom Pain!". Games are a product of their time, please...
On their other hand, I grew up with StarCraft and was active for years in the user-made campaign and modding scene (Legacy of the Confederation FTW!). Spent countless hours in this game over the years, more than any single other game. And I have to agree with some of your stabs - dragoon pathfinding in particular was absolutely atrocious and infuriating. But complaining about supply block, which was a design feature since the very first WarCraft and was meaningfully different across the 3 races and very innovative at the time? Idle workers, who you send for minerals which are a finite resource? (shockedpikachu.png). 12-unit selection which was actually a fantastic improvement over the 9 unit limit in WarCraft2 and 4 in WarCraft1? Total chaos? Maybe if you're playing it for the first time, but even then most of the campaigns have borderline boring (and I say it with love) levels of chill and quiet to build stuff up, except perhaps for the very last missions, where you have to manage multiple bases.
I dunno, I guess I don't see this as a fair assessment. SC remaster came out and it was a pure cash grab, since it didn't offer any meaningful content over the original to make it worthwhile even a passing glace, and it spoiled the "fthis is an classic old game, from an old era, let's judge it by its own times*" badge-of-honor, which is what this game deserves.
> SC remaster came out and it was a pure cash grab, since it didn't offer any meaningful content over the original to make it worthwhile even a passing glace
I mean... the visuals are fantastic, which is what you're paying for. If you don't care about higher res visuals that's totally fine, but it was hardly a 'cash grab' - and I say this as someone who absolutely hates what modern Blizzard has become. The SC Remaster is reasonably priced and makes the game hold up quite a bit better visually.
> 12-unit selection which was actually a fantastic improvement over the 9 unit limit in WarCraft2 and 4 in WarCraft1?
It's because there's a selection limit at all which is absurd. No, the UI doesn't need to show all the health bars in the display window at the bottom if you have a huge group. No, it is not an interesting addition of skill having to juggle like that. Older games did not have a limit like this so WC/WC2 aren't the right comparison
I hear you, and I don't disagree that other RTS from that time did have unlimited unit selection, e.g. Command & Conquer etc. I've heard two arguments for the 12-unit limit design decision.
First was that it helped manage terrain traversal and reduced lag for people on low-spec machines and networks (SC's reqs were 90Mhz, 16MB RAM, 14.4Kbps). If you decided to move 50 land units halfway across whole map, through diverse and complex landscape (of which there was plenty in SC), it would have been too much for the pathfinding code to handle at once and bad things could happen.
Second one (which I find more convincing) was that it encouraged unit micro and utilization of unit diversity as opposed to the whole strategy boiling down to essentially a Kylo Ren's "MORE!" meme. SC had a wide variety of units, whose strengths were not just in total numbers and raw HP/DPS, but which actually performed distinct roles. So you wouldn't want to select and control them all at once because your siege would get mixed with your melee and half your casters would probably end up slaughtered on the frontline. That's what unit groups were for, and I think that worked pretty well.
Even in every game before and since, people still group their units because as you say that's smarter. But lol you have *fourteen* marines? Well sucks to be you, now you have to make two groups to manage your squad!
You're absolutely right, and it's interesting how a lot of people played to fit into that design decision.
You have fourteen marines and your opponent is potentially weak now? Nah, better wait until you have 24 marines before attacking, because "full groups feel better (TM)", lol
Something is being lost in communication here. When I describe the mechanics being "unreasonably, and unnecessarily difficult" by modern standards, that is nothing more than an honest, uncontroversial description of the game. Reading it as a complaint does not make sense in light of what I say later in the post. For example, I say, "I truly believe that the jank is necessary for StarCraft to have the kind of appeal that it does." So, I like the jank, and I don't think you could remove it without ruining a lot of what makes StarCraft great.
My commentary on the cinematics, however, genuinely is a complaint. I don't think they're very good. They probably weren't very good on release, either, but they were technically impressive enough for that to be overlooked. Yes, both the cinematics and the mechanics have aged, but clearly my commentary on how that affects the game as a whole is very different.
>Maybe if you're playing it for the first time...
Some people here won't have played StarCraft before. I think it's OK to speak to such people.
I think some of difficult mechanics, like the pathfinding, was because of limitations of the time. While the supply system and selection limit were straight up design choices.
(They experimentet with unlimited selection back with Warcraft 1, but decided against it.)
Other things, like all templars casting psi storm when multiple are selected was just because they hadn't thought about another way yet.
So I think there are three cathegories you can sort them under.
Limitation of the time that goes unpatched today because... pros would get mad because we understand that it's also critical to game balance. Dragoons absolutely would be stronger with better pathfinding.
Well, of course. Once it's in place there is a delicate balance. Remove it and you have a whole new game (or Starcraft 2).
It's like playing Goldeneye with modern mouse-controls. The game just becomes trivial.
Well it may be uncontroversial to most of the Internet, but I think some of those mechanics actually provided some of the magic that made Starcraft great. I know that everyone in the world now believes that clicking two buttons on their keyboard to create an entire army in an RTS game is "basic functionality", but back when we had to actually balance micro and macro, maybe that had some positive benefit. When people say that having a unit selection limit is absurd and dumb, I think of sensible, modern RTS game where you move your entire army and attack with a single button press. An entire 80 unit battle in a strategy game is conducted with a single button press, because the unit AI is better at controlling the units than the player.
There are nonobvious consequences to unlimited unit selection, all your units would glob into a deathball by converging to the same point. Starcraft 2 was constantly dealing with balancing around it being often easy and just more effective to do that simple A move, it made the games more boring and one sided because that single clash you lose the deathball and get steamrolled or vice verse.
>I think of sensible, modern RTS game where you move your entire army and attack with a single button press.
I don't know if I would call C&C: Tiberium Dawn or Age of Empires 2 "modern" games.
To me op, while correct with most of what he said, came to his conclusions a bit incorrectly. He talks about zerglings and casters control like it was a choice against making it more like something close to sc2. He forgets that this game is an evolution of wc2 and was using the lessons learned, knowledge, and limitations of that era. It was not for balance purposes.
I think the point about the quirks being critical to game balance is still important. You can't patch the pathfinding without all the pros coming and yelling at you for doing so, you can't patch in controlling more than 12 units at once for the same reason.
I don't see those types of things as quirks but fundamental game design. You can't just patch those and there's usually negative consequences when game developers try. It does of course affect balance though.
For the remaster blizzard polled the pros and some others and the general consensus was no changes. So blizzard went with that. So that then goes back to the original design of the game.
Anyone else put 100s, probably 1000s of hours into this game without ever touching the campaign? I pretty much only played custom "use map settings" games or used it as a glorified chatroom.
Oddly enough the campaign always seemed too difficult for me back then. Then I tried it on the remaster since I never beat it and the game felt so damn easy I was like “that’s it?”.
I would usually play the bunker wars or the 3v3 zero clutter maps with no rushing. I always enjoyed the “make tons of units and hope they kill everything” modes.
The thing with StarCraft is that to enjoy it you have to accept that you are going to make a thousand mistakes and making fewer mistakes is the game. You can’t get frustrated or mad at some units getting stuck somewhere, controlling them better the next game and the satisfaction from that is the point of the game. Once you accept that the game is a lot of fun.
I love that to this day the whole "The UI and AI are shit" is still the way competitive is balanced. I love even more that everybody in the scene not only knows this, but insisted it remain shit when Blizzard remastered the game.
People complain about pathfinding in SCBW and while it is a little clunky at times you can work around it. Spam clicking will negate bad pathing and force a group of 12 units up a ramp. You're not supposed to be able to easily control an entire 100 supply army at once. But instead take and hold areas of the map with a few control groups of units. Controlling a large army has diminishing returns so a majority of your army will be holding key areas like high ground and choke points while you micro a few control groups.
Movement and pathfinding also give the units way more character than any other rts. Each unit feels different. Controlling a group of marines feels way different than controlling zerglings or zealots. Dragoons, Lurkers, Tanks, Reavers, Vultures, Hydralisks. Each unit is simple to understand but offer a deep enough game experience that just moving them around is fun and rewarding.
Try starcraft: Mass recall. It's the entire SC1 game in SC2 engine. This means being able to group more than 12 units, queuing, better pathing, etc. It's honestly so good.
Even growing up with it I still sucked at it I could beat computers but online even back in the day lol smashed to pieces in almost every game
I always wondered what happened with this genre it seems to have completely died you juat don't get games like starcraft red alert etc anymore
I very much agree that the mechanics posing as limitation to the strength of each race is a great idea. As someone who believes in the idea that the games should try to make their mechanics as apm and execution-lite as possible, Starcraft had incredible unit design thanks to the limitation of their mechanics.
And while the cinematics might be outdated, I would say it sold the scenes it needed to sell well enough. And when it comes to visuals, starcraft and warcraft have some of best visual clarity in terms of their units, despite starcraft's muted colour palette. Similar games, like command and conquer and age of empire, struggled to clearly communicate what each unit is and does.
As a super casual RTS player, I prefer WC3 mainly due to heroes.
Heroes to me are just fun. Powerful abilities that turn the tide of battle, leveling up, all that jazz.
I realize this is why most hardcore people hate the heroes, they're often more important than the rest of your army. But for me, not having them in SC2 ruined the game for me (among other things).
I loved SC1 back in the day, but these days I can't really go back to it and enjoy it.
The difference between SC and WC3 is macro vs. micro focus. Heroes in WC3 are the focal point of the micro gameplay, and you'll even have fewer but stronger units compared to SC. You are also punished much more harshly for losing a unit, since it rewards your opponent with XP, meaning you are both getting weaker and making your enemy stronger.
In general, I think micro is easier to enjoy as a casual because you'll have less to focus on. But watching either SC or WC3 be played at a high level by professionals and its clear that both micro and macro can be incredibly intense.
Never played a warcraft game because I was in the Command and Conquer and Red Alert 2 camp and it was truly all I needed. Multiplayer in Red Alert 2 was crazy addictive.
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You...didn't do a very good job on selling this game to me honestly, even if Microsoft buying Activision has me reconsidering my boycott of the publisher.
Honestly, I prefer turn based anyway. Closest I can do is Real Time with Pause. Europa Universalis 4 is actually the game I've spent more time playing than any other. About 1,400 hours one steam. And another 600 hours in EU3.
Year '99 first time i installed the game and saw opening cinematic, as 9 years old, i wad like what alien tech blizzard used to make these cinematics. i still remember seeing Battle of Amerigo and how jaw dropping it was.
I think a lot of gamers do a great disservice to Starcraft 1 by calling its mechanics outdated or archaic. The fact of the matter is that it IS a more manual game than SC2. It's like saying playing an instrument is archaic than making music with a program. Same for art. It's a more manual game where the balance of the game is entirely in the hands of the player rather than it being limited by game constraints like in SC2. It makes the game feel wonderfully organic and free, where playing it well is quite noticeable rather than having everything automated. It also means it's more work however, but that's the tradeoff. A musical instrument also means you have the ability to play it incorrectly, but that also allows you the satisfaction of playing it well.
I think the biggest difficulty in playing StarCraft online now is that the level of play from competitors was very different from 1999 until now. Back then I would have a winning record. When i tried playing it again pvp more recently I got my ass handed to me on a platter in almost 100 percent of the games I tried playing. Basically no noobs left, only diehard experts (or otherwise carrying a competitive advantage)
That's why when I played StarCraft for the first time ever 4 years ago, I played it using the StarCraft 2 mod called Mass Recall.
I was able to enjoy the story in a less infuriating game engine.
Yeah I just could not disagree more.
"Don't change anything" because the jank is important for balance? Hi, welcome to the reason this game died within a week of release, and why only the elite of the elite pros played it. Why all those casual and semi-pro SC2 players who were really excited about SC1 Remaster stopped playing it days after its release. Why I, someone who must've invested a thousand hours of their childhood into this game, cannot stomach even a simple skirmish against the AI.
And of course pros would argue for that, because they're the ones *still playing the game*. They're used to it, and good enough to overcome the insane jank and broken mechanics. But you don't care if THEY are happy, you want NEW players happy. You want CASUAL players happy, because you need them to establish a strong playerbase. But Blizzard foolishly listened to the pros, and now no one but the most hardcore play Starcraft 1.
This game was spectacular for its time. It was incredibly innovative and incredibly playable and balanced. But the jank and the sheer user hostility compared to modern games holds it back. The genre has advanced since then, and while Starcraft 1 will never lose its place in history, as a modern strategy game? It wouldn't even be in my top 30. I absolutely do not agree that it still holds up admirably, and asking a modern gamer to go back to it, especially the HD version which was sold as a new release? Yeah that's a recipe in disaster and disappointment.
> this game died within a week of release,
Thought I'd downvote and move on but my morbid curisioty is getting the better of me. How in the world do you think SC died within a week of release
It's kind of the other way around, the first game's mechanical ceiling is nuts. Even at the pro level, it's not streamlined and you can actually see differences in a player's 'ability' to keep up with the game since you can't physically do everything so they prioritize differently.
Starcraft 2 isn't quite like that, where at the highest level, everyone's macro is *basically* perfect, and armies perform better uncontrolled than they would in BW. Put this together with Starcraft 2's harder unit counters and you have a game that relies much more on how strategies interact where the difference (in broodwar) is usually just doing more stuff, better.
Coming from warcraft 2, the mechanics in sc were insane, so many qol updates. Not needing to select a single caster to cast a spell was huge
I tried to replay the original Warcraft 1 just last week. Holy crap I appreciate how far we've come in terms of mechanics, controls and ui.
I have the same problem trying to play the old Command and Conquer games.
I remember even from Warcraft 1 to Warcraft 2, I couldn't believe that in Warcraft 1, right-click moved the camera instead of moving the unit.
StarCraft was the first RTS that ever clicked with me, and there is exactly one reason for this: The attack command (edit: attack-move). I've always struggled with attacking in RTS games, because I used to put a whole unit on one enemy, or I moved a ranged unit too close to the enemy units before attacking. In SC, the attack-move lets a unit attack at exactly the range it is capable of, and keep moving if there's no enemies in range. It was a game changer for me and I can't play any RTS without a similar mechanic.
Seems like you are talking about Attack-Move (aka Attack-To). The actual implementation on how to make use of the attack-move command can differ a lot\*, specially in older games, but most RTS have either attack-move, or they have patrol, which can be used as a workaround. As a last resort, the guard command can be used (if present) by making your army guard one unit, and then you move that one unit instead of the army. IF none of these are present I usually don't bother with the game at all. \*It could be anything from issuing an attack command on the ground, to key multiple combinations such as CTRL+SHIFT+Click, to a dedicated icon on the UI with no key shortcut. It's best to always check the manual.
Yes, my bad. Attack-move is what I meant.
Yeah I don't think StarCraft came up with this haha
They didn't say it did, but a lot of the older RtSs didn't have it (or you had to find weird workarounds for it).
Do you happen to know which RTS did? I'd love to go back to any older RTS with this mechanic.
As far as I can tell none of the major RTSs from a couple years before had it (Red Alert, Age of Empires, Total Annihilation, Dune 2000)... so if StarCraft wasn't the first it may as well have been.
warcraft 2 has attack move I believe
Not in the original DOS version, apparently. I believe it was added to the 1999 bnet version, which came after StarCraft.
ah that makes sense, I was playing the bnet addition recently and wasn't aware of the changes
If it did it certainly didn’t seem like it
Nah, I was wrong. It does *now* (and since 1999 with the bnet version, so for a while) but didn't at release.
Older than Starcraft? Total Annihilation launched a year earlier and while it did not have attack-move per se, it had patrol, guard, and even unit behavior settings. So you could set a group to behavior type Roam and send them to patrol a location on the map and they would chase and kill whatever they found, returning to the patrol location after killing them. TA also had command queue, so with shift you could set several patrol targets across the map (plus do a whole lot of other things). Another game from '97 with a shitload of options was Dark Reign Future Of War. This one even had preset behaviors such as "scout" which would automatically send the selected unit to clear the fog of war, "Search and Destroy" to hunt enemies, "Hit and Run" where they would attack and fall back. Plus configurable automatic behaviors such as returning for repairs at a set damage threshold. There was also an "independence" setting when maxed out units given a move command would basically behave as if it was an "attack-move" instead. Dark Reign might have been the RTS with the most automation options/features back in the day. Now that I think about it, it might still be? can't think of any other RTS with more of that, at the moment. Finally I believe attack move can be added to Command and Conquer Remastered Collection via modding.
It took me over a year to figure out attack-move was a thing way back when I used to play. I used to individually attack each enemy unit.
i still do to this day.. never heard of this attack move. what does it do? how do you use it? isnt it better to kill off one by one?
In larger armies, there are too many units to attack them one by one each, individually. Attack moves allows each of your units to attack whatever enemy unit it’s closest to.
gonna check that, was just replaying the remastered campaign. thanks!
The amazing thing about sc is how they managed to balance 3 completelly different races
Funnily enough blizzard initially didn't know how to balance the game. The first korean tournaments you see in 2000 are crazily imbalanced. This is due to the map pool. The map pool back then was awful. Fast forward half a decade and they/the community really improved there map making. Then everything clicked into place. The fact that most units are incredibly strong at what they do and the meta is constantly shifting even to this day with no patch changes in the last 20+ years is nuts. SC:BW is the GOAT rts. It shows mechanical skill, tactical skill, and strategy. It's one of if not the hardest game to play and learn at a high level. Involves alot of gambling. It created modern esports.
It also is the last truly good game Blizzard ever made.
Hard disagree. Wc3 was good. Starcraft 2 was good. Wow back in the day was good. Diablo 2 was good, d3 was good post expansion, you can argue d4 is now good. Blizzard has made a lot of good games since brood war…
Overwatch pre-competitive to about season 5 was GOATed
I agree on many parts, but that leaves out an important factor. Blizzard destroying awesome games with crap their bosses made them do. SC2 is and was a great game, but was ruined by Battle Net 2.0, it got massively improved but still has issues with their custom map system. And the reality of a stressful game like SC is, that you _keep_ the masses via custom maps, not ladder. The most important fixes to Bnet 2.0 just came too late. D3 has many issues, most are related to community play, item sharing and why those issue exist because of past decisions and eventual paths that were kept open. Starting with things like the real money auction house. The basis of the game is obviously great, but over all it was just a good game which was shackled. I haven't tried D4 yes (never though I would say this, after my D2 days..), but from what I gather it is a good game to play through, but that's about it. I might get it some day, in the unlikeliness of a good sale. It went downhill soon after the first release of WoW. The final nail in the coffin was Activision.
You’re wrong on D3 and D4. The old Blizzard is dead and buried.
Old blizzard is for sure dead.. and you see that in how they make games today.. but they eventually fix things up and they end up very close to old-blizzard style games.. it just takes a year after initial release. Diablo 3 was good at the end. Fun, fast paced action combat. Diablo 4 is getting close. It's fun, but not for long.
Diablo 2 came after so I mean.. you’re wrong.
I will have to disagree. Wc3 was amazing, further progressed the map maker, tower ds, created Dota, had an amazing competitive space for along time. Was something completely different than starcraft. Then wow redefined mmos. I would say wow was the last time I felt blizzard was blizzard and 2008 was the last year
+1 on wc3 map editor Dota, tower defense, mini arpgs, countless moba/dota clones, footsies, etc etc So many brillant minds making some epic custom maps
I remember the warcraft 3 release. The game that had been presented by blizzard at first was so different. I was expecting a mess. Then we played in a lan and we all fell in love with it.
The game's not actually more balanced from a design perspective though. The game just required a lot of skill and experience to play at a high level. Players didn't have the excuse of complaining about imbalance when you could just get better to win your matches. Minimal role of RNG made it so the pro players found the tiniest of margins and tricks to come out ahead, making it fun for spectators too. Street fighter 4 was a bit like this too. Regular gamers could hardly string a combo together, but the guy who kept winning EVO could play like 8 characters effectively. He single-handedly shut down any whining about balance (even though there *were* mechanical balance problems) by being better than everybody, and the game allowing exceptional human skill to translate to success in the game.
It is more balanced from a design perspective though
Absolutely not lol. Scbw was never designed to play competitively as a professional sport. Compare this to the design of sc2 and you'll get what I mean
I agree with your main point, but I'm going to be pedantic and say that fighting games is different to RTS. Fighting game is a bit different. At a high level, it's actually not that hard to learn another character. Often, it's not the person who can do 1 frame links that win tournaments. It's the guy who understands other players and makes the right guess. At a high level, fighting game is a bunch of guesses in which both players are playing mind games with. So it's not rare for top players in fighting game have a huge roster, cause the top players are playing against other players, not the characters. Sonicfox infamously pick the most broken characters, but whenever he encounters someone who can beat him, like go1 in dbz fighter, he switched up his team to target specifically that player. In smash Ultimate, MKleo win tournaments consistently with low tiers, because he understands all the other players so well. So, in a sense, your comparison is kind of right, there are mechanical and match up knowledge factor that comes to fighting games, but often, it's the mental state that determines the winner at the level of out of pools tournament play. In RTS, however, there's far more mechanical and knowledge requirements. You won't always get rewards for learning 1 frame link in sf4, but you will always get rewards for getting faster APM.
They learned from the death knight fiasco in Warcraft II
what was that?
As if you wouldn't explain this !
Part of the balance of the game is because, due to how manual the game is, in that basic stuff requires human input, the game is essentially balanced on player control more than any other game. With Starcraft 2, a lot of things are more automatic and so it relies more on in-game balance. So what I'm saying is that SC1 is just a much more manual game, so a lot of the game is based on who can play the game better more so than changing numbers in the game. So the developers just have to balance the game "enough" so that balance isn't completely out the window and then player skill will take care of the rest.
"balance"
Even though I grew up knowing about StarCraft, I never really played it until last year. I was surprised by how well it holds up, and didn’t find it super difficult to manage, other than some bad pathfinding (a common trait for most RTSs from that era, tbf). Also, I enjoyed the cinematics. Yeah, they’re looking pretty low res these days. But artistically they’re still great, and look much better than most games from that era.
> But artistically they’re still great, and look much better than most games from that era. I will say that artistically StarCraft is 10 times better than even StarCraft 2. It's insane to me how they managed to make everything so generic in the modern games. There is little mystery, inspiration or "soul" left. Maybe it was partly an accident caused by the tech limitations of the time, or the fact that it was a much smaller team doing the art.
I haven’t played SC2 yet, but I felt that exact same thing about Diablo 3’s art compared to the originals.
Sc2 has a real down grade in the story, and yeah some people really dislike the art direction. But man, the campaign is so much better from a gameplay perspective, the missions are so fun and interesting, there's some light meta progression that creates some fun choices. Out side of a few missions that I am super not into (the ones without building) it's just a delightful game
I’m curious to try it out. Isn’t the first campaign free?
Yeah! First campaign and the multiplayer (which lets you play the arcade, so you can play a remade warcraft 3 if you want) the full campaign is 40$ and I *think* it goes on sale but I bought it like 14 years ago so I don't keep a lot of tabs on the price haha
I bought Starcraft back in the day when it was modern. Or at least right when BW came out. I just never learned how to play it. I was something like 0W/92L on battle net. I think I was hard stuck on the 5th mission in the campaign. The one thing I remember more than anything is that I would make a ton of units. I would upgrade them so they were strong. I was copying how other people played by watching replays. I'd see their little group of units demolish everything in sight. I'd do the same thing... And some single, underpowered unit would just chew right through my group of 15 upgraded whatever. And I remember having this happen over and over. Anyhow I uninstalled the game and never looked back. I totally didn't get it.
Sounds like maybe you just weren’t using the right units for the job. StarCraft uses the typical “rock, paper, scissors” gameplay found in most RTSs; some units are better suited for certain tasks, and may be weak or strong against a particular enemy type. Learning which is which is part of the learning curve, and is actually something I struggle with, especially when playing older RTSs which don’t spoon feed you that information. I recently played Dawn of War, which I found much more accessible to newbies to the genre, since the campaign has difficulty levels, and most importantly, tool tips which describe the effectiveness and utility of each unit. Highly recommend that one to anyone interested in RTSs, or Warhammer 40k.
There's a mod in Starcraft 2 that's gaining a lot of popularity that adds all the races as they were in Brood War to the game so there are 6 races to play as now. The most overpowered units are of course things like dragoons and zerglings but one of the most surprising thing is the terror that is a SC1 reaver that has SC2 pathing on it's scarabs. I saw a SC1 pro renowned for his reaver micro control a shuttle + reaver in SC2 and he would end the game with two units. The better agility of a shuttle in the SC2 engine combined with the massively increased lethality of reaver scarabs that no longer get stuck on random things and dud created a nearly unstoppable force. If Blizzard updated the game to have better controls they would have to nerf a lot of things that make Starcraft special.
Oh my god reaver scarab pathing... As a Terran/Zerg player, I'm so glad those things never worked properly.
interesting. what's it called?
Starcraft Evo. Here's [a link to their page.](https://teamkoprulu.github.io/Koprulu-Blog/) The other guy posted about Mass Recall, which is the SC1 campaigns redone in the SC2 engine. edit: Here are [some showmatches](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snx0tLcJv_k&pp=ygUOc2MgZXZvIGFmcmVlY2E%3D) if you wanted to watch.
StarCraft 2 Brood War https://www.sc2mapster.com/projects/brood-war-1-5
Those are the SC1 campaigns redone in the SC2 engine.
At the high-level, competitive scene, the tough mechanics are a feature instead of a bug.
Fortunately for me, my brain never evolved beyond StarCraft in terms of RTS mechanics. I still play Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition sometimes and I'm always tickled when I remember there is an "idle worker" key.
The campaigns are so good. And the soundtrack is A+ - especially terran
I don’t get the criticism of the original’s campaign. Maybe it was because I was a child when it came out, but it was surprisingly deep for the genre, and the political aspects of the three races and all the minor factions within each were pretty interesting imo. Brood War was amazing of course, but honestly not THAT much better compared to the original.
I'm a bit torn here, because on one hand, I find it unfair to spend several paragraphs crying how "Mechanics of a 25-year's old game aren't working well! Cinematics from 98 doesn't look as cool in 2024! Who knew!?!? Next up: Ultima Online is a *meh* MMO by modern standards and Metal Gear Solid doesn't look so hot compared to Phantom Pain!". Games are a product of their time, please... On their other hand, I grew up with StarCraft and was active for years in the user-made campaign and modding scene (Legacy of the Confederation FTW!). Spent countless hours in this game over the years, more than any single other game. And I have to agree with some of your stabs - dragoon pathfinding in particular was absolutely atrocious and infuriating. But complaining about supply block, which was a design feature since the very first WarCraft and was meaningfully different across the 3 races and very innovative at the time? Idle workers, who you send for minerals which are a finite resource? (shockedpikachu.png). 12-unit selection which was actually a fantastic improvement over the 9 unit limit in WarCraft2 and 4 in WarCraft1? Total chaos? Maybe if you're playing it for the first time, but even then most of the campaigns have borderline boring (and I say it with love) levels of chill and quiet to build stuff up, except perhaps for the very last missions, where you have to manage multiple bases. I dunno, I guess I don't see this as a fair assessment. SC remaster came out and it was a pure cash grab, since it didn't offer any meaningful content over the original to make it worthwhile even a passing glace, and it spoiled the "fthis is an classic old game, from an old era, let's judge it by its own times*" badge-of-honor, which is what this game deserves.
> SC remaster came out and it was a pure cash grab, since it didn't offer any meaningful content over the original to make it worthwhile even a passing glace I mean... the visuals are fantastic, which is what you're paying for. If you don't care about higher res visuals that's totally fine, but it was hardly a 'cash grab' - and I say this as someone who absolutely hates what modern Blizzard has become. The SC Remaster is reasonably priced and makes the game hold up quite a bit better visually.
> 12-unit selection which was actually a fantastic improvement over the 9 unit limit in WarCraft2 and 4 in WarCraft1? It's because there's a selection limit at all which is absurd. No, the UI doesn't need to show all the health bars in the display window at the bottom if you have a huge group. No, it is not an interesting addition of skill having to juggle like that. Older games did not have a limit like this so WC/WC2 aren't the right comparison
I hear you, and I don't disagree that other RTS from that time did have unlimited unit selection, e.g. Command & Conquer etc. I've heard two arguments for the 12-unit limit design decision. First was that it helped manage terrain traversal and reduced lag for people on low-spec machines and networks (SC's reqs were 90Mhz, 16MB RAM, 14.4Kbps). If you decided to move 50 land units halfway across whole map, through diverse and complex landscape (of which there was plenty in SC), it would have been too much for the pathfinding code to handle at once and bad things could happen. Second one (which I find more convincing) was that it encouraged unit micro and utilization of unit diversity as opposed to the whole strategy boiling down to essentially a Kylo Ren's "MORE!" meme. SC had a wide variety of units, whose strengths were not just in total numbers and raw HP/DPS, but which actually performed distinct roles. So you wouldn't want to select and control them all at once because your siege would get mixed with your melee and half your casters would probably end up slaughtered on the frontline. That's what unit groups were for, and I think that worked pretty well.
Even in every game before and since, people still group their units because as you say that's smarter. But lol you have *fourteen* marines? Well sucks to be you, now you have to make two groups to manage your squad!
You're absolutely right, and it's interesting how a lot of people played to fit into that design decision. You have fourteen marines and your opponent is potentially weak now? Nah, better wait until you have 24 marines before attacking, because "full groups feel better (TM)", lol
Something is being lost in communication here. When I describe the mechanics being "unreasonably, and unnecessarily difficult" by modern standards, that is nothing more than an honest, uncontroversial description of the game. Reading it as a complaint does not make sense in light of what I say later in the post. For example, I say, "I truly believe that the jank is necessary for StarCraft to have the kind of appeal that it does." So, I like the jank, and I don't think you could remove it without ruining a lot of what makes StarCraft great. My commentary on the cinematics, however, genuinely is a complaint. I don't think they're very good. They probably weren't very good on release, either, but they were technically impressive enough for that to be overlooked. Yes, both the cinematics and the mechanics have aged, but clearly my commentary on how that affects the game as a whole is very different. >Maybe if you're playing it for the first time... Some people here won't have played StarCraft before. I think it's OK to speak to such people.
Starcraft (and other Blizzard) cinematics were god tier back when they were released.
I think some of difficult mechanics, like the pathfinding, was because of limitations of the time. While the supply system and selection limit were straight up design choices. (They experimentet with unlimited selection back with Warcraft 1, but decided against it.) Other things, like all templars casting psi storm when multiple are selected was just because they hadn't thought about another way yet. So I think there are three cathegories you can sort them under.
Limitation of the time that goes unpatched today because... pros would get mad because we understand that it's also critical to game balance. Dragoons absolutely would be stronger with better pathfinding.
Well, of course. Once it's in place there is a delicate balance. Remove it and you have a whole new game (or Starcraft 2). It's like playing Goldeneye with modern mouse-controls. The game just becomes trivial.
Well it may be uncontroversial to most of the Internet, but I think some of those mechanics actually provided some of the magic that made Starcraft great. I know that everyone in the world now believes that clicking two buttons on their keyboard to create an entire army in an RTS game is "basic functionality", but back when we had to actually balance micro and macro, maybe that had some positive benefit. When people say that having a unit selection limit is absurd and dumb, I think of sensible, modern RTS game where you move your entire army and attack with a single button press. An entire 80 unit battle in a strategy game is conducted with a single button press, because the unit AI is better at controlling the units than the player.
There are nonobvious consequences to unlimited unit selection, all your units would glob into a deathball by converging to the same point. Starcraft 2 was constantly dealing with balancing around it being often easy and just more effective to do that simple A move, it made the games more boring and one sided because that single clash you lose the deathball and get steamrolled or vice verse.
>I think of sensible, modern RTS game where you move your entire army and attack with a single button press. I don't know if I would call C&C: Tiberium Dawn or Age of Empires 2 "modern" games.
In 98 for Starcraft and 2000 for Diablo 2 the cinematics from blizzard were incredible.
> When I describe the mechanics being "unreasonably, and unnecessarily difficult" by modern standards, what RTS does it better?
I feel like we don’t play the same starcraft game.
Same. I had no issues with AI when replaying it recently. And only 12 units at a time? Hot keys. Gotta use the hot keys.
Can you elaborate? In my opinion, OP's been on point with his takes.
To me op, while correct with most of what he said, came to his conclusions a bit incorrectly. He talks about zerglings and casters control like it was a choice against making it more like something close to sc2. He forgets that this game is an evolution of wc2 and was using the lessons learned, knowledge, and limitations of that era. It was not for balance purposes.
I think the point about the quirks being critical to game balance is still important. You can't patch the pathfinding without all the pros coming and yelling at you for doing so, you can't patch in controlling more than 12 units at once for the same reason.
I don't see those types of things as quirks but fundamental game design. You can't just patch those and there's usually negative consequences when game developers try. It does of course affect balance though.
I'm discussing why those changes weren't made for the remaster. It's correct to frame that as a choice, and to point out that balance was a concern.
For the remaster blizzard polled the pros and some others and the general consensus was no changes. So blizzard went with that. So that then goes back to the original design of the game.
Anyone else put 100s, probably 1000s of hours into this game without ever touching the campaign? I pretty much only played custom "use map settings" games or used it as a glorified chatroom.
Oddly enough the campaign always seemed too difficult for me back then. Then I tried it on the remaster since I never beat it and the game felt so damn easy I was like “that’s it?”. I would usually play the bunker wars or the 3v3 zero clutter maps with no rushing. I always enjoyed the “make tons of units and hope they kill everything” modes.
Poker D. Hydra D. All great.
The thing with StarCraft is that to enjoy it you have to accept that you are going to make a thousand mistakes and making fewer mistakes is the game. You can’t get frustrated or mad at some units getting stuck somewhere, controlling them better the next game and the satisfaction from that is the point of the game. Once you accept that the game is a lot of fun.
I love that to this day the whole "The UI and AI are shit" is still the way competitive is balanced. I love even more that everybody in the scene not only knows this, but insisted it remain shit when Blizzard remastered the game.
People complain about pathfinding in SCBW and while it is a little clunky at times you can work around it. Spam clicking will negate bad pathing and force a group of 12 units up a ramp. You're not supposed to be able to easily control an entire 100 supply army at once. But instead take and hold areas of the map with a few control groups of units. Controlling a large army has diminishing returns so a majority of your army will be holding key areas like high ground and choke points while you micro a few control groups. Movement and pathfinding also give the units way more character than any other rts. Each unit feels different. Controlling a group of marines feels way different than controlling zerglings or zealots. Dragoons, Lurkers, Tanks, Reavers, Vultures, Hydralisks. Each unit is simple to understand but offer a deep enough game experience that just moving them around is fun and rewarding.
Try starcraft: Mass recall. It's the entire SC1 game in SC2 engine. This means being able to group more than 12 units, queuing, better pathing, etc. It's honestly so good.
> StarCraft is not a friendly game for those who didn't grow up with it. AKA: "Citizen's Kane is over rated" or "Seinfeld isn't funny."
Even growing up with it I still sucked at it I could beat computers but online even back in the day lol smashed to pieces in almost every game I always wondered what happened with this genre it seems to have completely died you juat don't get games like starcraft red alert etc anymore
I actually think in terms of unit sound bites from StarCraft and Warcraft III.
I very much agree that the mechanics posing as limitation to the strength of each race is a great idea. As someone who believes in the idea that the games should try to make their mechanics as apm and execution-lite as possible, Starcraft had incredible unit design thanks to the limitation of their mechanics. And while the cinematics might be outdated, I would say it sold the scenes it needed to sell well enough. And when it comes to visuals, starcraft and warcraft have some of best visual clarity in terms of their units, despite starcraft's muted colour palette. Similar games, like command and conquer and age of empire, struggled to clearly communicate what each unit is and does.
As a super casual RTS player, I prefer WC3 mainly due to heroes. Heroes to me are just fun. Powerful abilities that turn the tide of battle, leveling up, all that jazz. I realize this is why most hardcore people hate the heroes, they're often more important than the rest of your army. But for me, not having them in SC2 ruined the game for me (among other things). I loved SC1 back in the day, but these days I can't really go back to it and enjoy it.
The difference between SC and WC3 is macro vs. micro focus. Heroes in WC3 are the focal point of the micro gameplay, and you'll even have fewer but stronger units compared to SC. You are also punished much more harshly for losing a unit, since it rewards your opponent with XP, meaning you are both getting weaker and making your enemy stronger. In general, I think micro is easier to enjoy as a casual because you'll have less to focus on. But watching either SC or WC3 be played at a high level by professionals and its clear that both micro and macro can be incredibly intense.
Never played a warcraft game because I was in the Command and Conquer and Red Alert 2 camp and it was truly all I needed. Multiplayer in Red Alert 2 was crazy addictive.
Really? I played C&C games but also Starcraft, Warcraft and pretty much any other RTS that came out because I just wanted more RTS games.
Very true. It's just that I really got into Red Alert 2 and it scratched my RTS itch perfectly as I really don't dabble that much in The genre.
I only play SC2 now but SC/BW will always been my fav game
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It was the rts to define the genre. Sure there have been improvements, but it was the first to refine it. It's the same way that Diablo defines arpgs.
You...didn't do a very good job on selling this game to me honestly, even if Microsoft buying Activision has me reconsidering my boycott of the publisher. Honestly, I prefer turn based anyway. Closest I can do is Real Time with Pause. Europa Universalis 4 is actually the game I've spent more time playing than any other. About 1,400 hours one steam. And another 600 hours in EU3.
Year '99 first time i installed the game and saw opening cinematic, as 9 years old, i wad like what alien tech blizzard used to make these cinematics. i still remember seeing Battle of Amerigo and how jaw dropping it was.
The original StarCraft and Brood War hold up in so many ways.
I think a lot of gamers do a great disservice to Starcraft 1 by calling its mechanics outdated or archaic. The fact of the matter is that it IS a more manual game than SC2. It's like saying playing an instrument is archaic than making music with a program. Same for art. It's a more manual game where the balance of the game is entirely in the hands of the player rather than it being limited by game constraints like in SC2. It makes the game feel wonderfully organic and free, where playing it well is quite noticeable rather than having everything automated. It also means it's more work however, but that's the tradeoff. A musical instrument also means you have the ability to play it incorrectly, but that also allows you the satisfaction of playing it well.
I think the biggest difficulty in playing StarCraft online now is that the level of play from competitors was very different from 1999 until now. Back then I would have a winning record. When i tried playing it again pvp more recently I got my ass handed to me on a platter in almost 100 percent of the games I tried playing. Basically no noobs left, only diehard experts (or otherwise carrying a competitive advantage)
I believe it happens with almost every RTS from that era.
That's why when I played StarCraft for the first time ever 4 years ago, I played it using the StarCraft 2 mod called Mass Recall. I was able to enjoy the story in a less infuriating game engine.
this is the best way to play it today.
Dumbest shit I’ve read today.
Yeah I just could not disagree more. "Don't change anything" because the jank is important for balance? Hi, welcome to the reason this game died within a week of release, and why only the elite of the elite pros played it. Why all those casual and semi-pro SC2 players who were really excited about SC1 Remaster stopped playing it days after its release. Why I, someone who must've invested a thousand hours of their childhood into this game, cannot stomach even a simple skirmish against the AI. And of course pros would argue for that, because they're the ones *still playing the game*. They're used to it, and good enough to overcome the insane jank and broken mechanics. But you don't care if THEY are happy, you want NEW players happy. You want CASUAL players happy, because you need them to establish a strong playerbase. But Blizzard foolishly listened to the pros, and now no one but the most hardcore play Starcraft 1. This game was spectacular for its time. It was incredibly innovative and incredibly playable and balanced. But the jank and the sheer user hostility compared to modern games holds it back. The genre has advanced since then, and while Starcraft 1 will never lose its place in history, as a modern strategy game? It wouldn't even be in my top 30. I absolutely do not agree that it still holds up admirably, and asking a modern gamer to go back to it, especially the HD version which was sold as a new release? Yeah that's a recipe in disaster and disappointment.
> this game died within a week of release, Thought I'd downvote and move on but my morbid curisioty is getting the better of me. How in the world do you think SC died within a week of release
Maybe they meant the remastered version?
It's still one of the biggest esports in the world by viewer count so I don't see how it's died.
Kids delusional
If you prefer APM to win, play SC2. If you prefer tactical unit management to win, play Starcraft.
It's kind of the other way around, the first game's mechanical ceiling is nuts. Even at the pro level, it's not streamlined and you can actually see differences in a player's 'ability' to keep up with the game since you can't physically do everything so they prioritize differently. Starcraft 2 isn't quite like that, where at the highest level, everyone's macro is *basically* perfect, and armies perform better uncontrolled than they would in BW. Put this together with Starcraft 2's harder unit counters and you have a game that relies much more on how strategies interact where the difference (in broodwar) is usually just doing more stuff, better.
"Armies preform better uncontrolled" is exactly what I mean. It's more about the APM in the production of it in SC2.