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Hi All,
I was asked to give a 20-30 minute talk in the Online Gaming Symposium regarding the best/worst features, implementations, etc of StarCraft.
Their goal is to compare multiplayer features and interfaces of the best online games in the market.
My goal for this talk is to list all reasons of why StarCraft is the best damn game ever and why it rocks all other games (and perhaps what improvements could be made on the game).
I would appreciate your help in coming up with different reasons for this.
Thanks!
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3 completly different races which are !balanced !
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cause you get addicted too it playing or not, if you have played it once...
i mean there are manymany people who mainly watch replays and do mot really play that much...
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All the events, how hard it's to be really good..etc
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I'll begin by adding the most important best feature:
-Terran
Then, after that:
-Great racial diversity, and by this I mean real racial diversity. The races all behave very differently in the way they play, and the units they have aren't just the same unit with a different customs(word?).
-Balance!
-Huge learning curve. This is, though, what makes people migrate to money maps, so I'll leave it to you to decide if it's a good or a bad feature ^^
-Clear graphics. Even though they're 640x480 and pure pixel, you can see everything going on at the screen with good clarity which is a thing many 3D games lack =|
-Excellent UI! Even though pretty much every thing Blizzard makes has this, you're likely to grit your teeth at games like DoW where you have to click your marines 3-4 times so they actually go somewhere a lot of the time, or at least that's what I experienced >.>
-Very good strategical depth, especially for a game with a small number of units (compared to new RTS's), and so old.
That's my 2 cents ^^
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is awesome32274 Posts
You have tons of options to play the game ums, 2v2, 1v1, Tons of maps, lots of races and a huge learning curve which helps in finding a lot of new things in the same game.
GAMELPAY.
Unit reponse, races...
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Very responsive UI. I mean, Koreans bang on it at 350 APM and it handles it no problem.
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GrandInquisitor
New York City13113 Posts
Best features - incredible balance to very deep depths - after all this time still no major imbalance found.
Usually in games when someone thinks "how do you counter XXX i can't stop it it's so hard" they'll say "probably imbalanced", but in BW people think "i haven't looked hard enough for the proper counter".
Worst features, which no one has yet touched upon - horrible horrible pathfinding / AI, overall crappy maps with the game (with a couple exceptions).
And it's debatable about some of BW's features - are they features or limitations in the game? (for example only selecting 12 units, situations like not being to cast psi storm if you have a zealot + high templar selected, being unable to select multiple enemy units, etc.)
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-addictive
-you can play for fun and for points, sometimes money and prizes ~.v
-you have lots of friends on bn
-replays
-map editor
-old game and still new tactics are produced =)
-your next game will never be the same
-u can play it on nearly every PC =)
-u dont need to have very fast IC
-like they say "one week to learn it, lifetime to master it" =]
-everybody can play it ~~
-GAMEPLAY !
-it takes lots of attention when you're playing =)
- even if u stopped playing on BN, u will be still connected with this game ;-P (like me -_-)
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mnm: how did you land that job?
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Alright, well, I'll try to give a decent list. Great that you were asked to do this 
In my opinion, there are two main reasons for StarCraft's success.
The first reason is the nature of the game. Easy to learn, impossible to master. The game was so great that the game itself has evolved beyond what anything Blizzard expected or invisioned. Instead of using infantry versus Protoss, the game allowed for people to be inventive enough to think of wall-ins and utilize the lift building feature to its fullest extent (for example). The game is fun regardless at what level you play. It is also one of the games that requires an impossible amount of skill. Many BW players find themselves bored playing other games like WC3, since they are simply used to another pace. It's like a chess player playing checkers.
The second reason, in my opinion, is its availability to the masses. Not only does it not require an amazing computer to play, it can be played whenever, wherever there is an internet connection. Battle.net provided StarCraft with a huge building base, and StarCraft just grew from there.
I'll now just give a basic list.
- Replayability (not replays, but the fact that you can play it over and over and over)
- The game evolves over time (most anyone here would probably rape Tsunami when he played in the beginning if he played the same gamestyle he did back then today, simply because of game evolution, not even mentioning players' evolution in micro and macro).
- The game is not based on luck that is not controlled by the player. What I mean is, in a given game, a player might get lucky by scouting a particular position and finding his opponent on his first try, but he could have equally scouted another position. This, opposed to finding an item (like in Red Alert) and getting lucky by finding 10000 minerals or something like that.
- Learning curve. A better player will easily beat a worse player. This isn't the case in a lot of games. The better player has to play either a long, safe game or he might potentially lose, even if the player has poorer macro, strategy, and micro.
- Pace. Pace is a very important part of SC, simply because without the speed at which SC runs it would be boring. However, the pace / speed adds to the learning curve. Strategy still beats speed, though, as many players have already proved to us.
- The races are so different that you in fact need different skills to play different matchups. In TvZ, for example, you require a lot of micro. PvT, however, requires a lot of macro, and little amount of late-game micro will save you (unless we're talking about cars and such).
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Easy to learn and start playing.
You can constantly improve at it
A lifetime to master
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It's art.
Wether you play creatively or not may count a bit, but eventually your reactions, micro/macro ability, tactical decisions confronted, mixed to those of your opponent in one single game, that's art.
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starcraft evolves with your characteristics.
for example: xellow "Perfect" terran because he doesnt allow any mistakes
Yellow "STorm" zerg because he attacks like hell
Nal Ra "Creative" toss and on and on
There is no "set" ways to play.
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Another great feature of SC is that there is no "super" unit and that almost every unit can be useful from early to late game.
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i think i'll just steal pieces of other peoples because so many things good listed already...
On September 14 2005 10:06 Beamo wrote:
3 completly different races which are !balanced !
a major point
also On September 14 2005 10:14 Ryshi wrote:
Very fast paced
and of course not just due to speed of movement/attacking but
On September 14 2005 10:10 Dingo_egret wrote:
-Clear graphics. Even though they're 640x480 and pure pixel, you can see everything going on at the screen with good clarity which is a thing many 3D games lack =|
-Excellent UI! Even though pretty much every thing Blizzard makes has this, you're likely to grit your teeth at games like DoW where you have to click your marines 3-4 times so they actually go somewhere a lot of the time, or at least that's what I experienced >.>
On September 14 2005 10:20 LaZyScV wrote:
5.)Units and buildings have low HP, thus it doesn't take forever to kill things.
6.)There's tons of things to watch and do; mini-map, expansions, building workers and telling them to mine, building army while watching the enemy, and other various things.
7.)Unit movement is smooth, and so are the controls.
more good stuff:
On September 14 2005 10:16 IntoTheWow wrote:
You have tons of options to play the game ums, 2v2, 1v1, Tons of maps, lots of races and a huge learning curve which helps in finding a lot of new things in the same game.
and
On September 14 2005 10:46 Oxygen wrote:
- The game is not based on luck that is not controlled by the player. What I mean is, in a given game, a player might get lucky by scouting a particular position and finding his opponent on his first try, but he could have equally scouted another position. This, opposed to finding an item (like in Red Alert) and getting lucky by finding 10000 minerals or something like that.
- Learning curve. A better player will easily beat a worse player. This isn't the case in a lot of games. The better player has to play either a long, safe game or he might potentially lose, even if the player has poorer macro, strategy, and micro.
- The races are so different that you in fact need different skills to play different matchups. In TvZ, for example, you require a lot of micro. PvT, however, requires a lot of macro, and little amount of late-game micro will save you (unless we're talking about cars and such).
etc. etc.
also something that was only mentioned a little i think has been the way the environment/maps can have a huge affect on the game, i love the way its realistic in certain important points (there are flying units, you can transport ground units over air) while at the same time withholding the realistic stuff that is unnecessary (should be obvious)
remember we still have to consider stuff like despite
On September 14 2005 10:20 LaZyScV wrote:
10.)The game doesn't do things for you; you have to clone units yourself, you have to send workers to mine, and so on.
it is important for
On September 14 2005 10:23 GrandInquisitor wrote:
Worst features, which no one has yet touched upon - horrible horrible pathfinding / AI, overall crappy maps with the game (with a couple exceptions).
And it's debatable about some of BW's features - are they features or limitations in the game? (for example only selecting 12 units, situations like not being to cast psi storm if you have a zealot + high templar selected, being unable to select multiple enemy units, etc.)
that last thing is a very important point, it is vital that games are not "newbified" such as if broodwar had auto-lockdown or auto-cloning for scourge, yet equal is the problem of not making needless obstacles for people, such as i think bw could actually be improved if a rally to a mineralfield for workers would actually have them automatically mine
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yeah as oxygen said "easy to learn, impossible to master". this means that with enough practice you can always get to a completely new level thus dominating the former champions. this reduces the influence of luck by a lot not only between pros but also between mid- and lowlvl players. if the top keeps rising in skill, the skill range of other players increases too and so the chance of having two ppl play at exactly the same strength is almost non-existant (imagine two players going 21:20 in a bo41).
i'm a zerg player so i will give two zerg examples:
a) the use of dark swarm - this spell has become popular maybe a year ago. against the new terrans zergs could hardly put up a fight without it anymore.
b) muta-micro: you wouldn't expect any development in matters of micro, especially for such a micro heavy unit as the mutalisk after 7 years but there was one. you didn't see such a perfect muta micro before julyzerg and ipx (talking about hit&run at a frequency just as fast as the normal attack frequency). july has taken down m&m forces with like 7-8 mutas which would have been estimated stronger than ~14 mutas half a year before.
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The greatest thing about brood war is that it is a game with such depth that you can play for hours and hours a day for 7 years and still not be even close to mastering it;)
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EPT
