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somat • yesterday at 7:32 PM • 4 replies • view on HN

Gratuitous cutscenes, annoying barks everywhere, huge useless animated portraits. It is basically the blizzard polish, looks better than it plays. Not that Starcraft plays bad, but none of the fluff contributes to gameplay. And that gameplay takes a lot more micromanagement than it needs to(some people like this. me, not so much).


Replies

wredcoll • yesterday at 10:20 PM

It's highly ironic that you've chosen to take this position about starcraft, one of the best playing games of all time.

Like, no, cutscenes have nothing do with improving gameplay, but they don't detract from it either.

The game itself is the epitome of responding to a user's inputs precisely the way they would expect them to.

There's certainly some design decisions you can dislike, (some of which were basically technical limitations) like some of the hot keys and workers not rallying, but those are pretty minor compared to the sheer perfection that is the rest of the game.

You can prefer a different type of game, one where you give high level orders to units or start with an army instead of building it, but that's clearly a very different genre of game and not one that TA and its children are trying to be.

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SgtBastard • yesterday at 9:51 PM

> Not that Starcraft plays bad, but none of the fluff contributes to gameplay. And that gameplay takes a lot more micromanagement than it needs to(some people like this. me, not so much)

As the gen Zs would say: Skill Issue.

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philipov • yesterday at 7:49 PM

None of that has anything to do with why starcraft is popular, though. Starcraft has a long history of organized professional competition, and that's responsible for sustaining interest in the game.

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rvba • yesterday at 8:25 PM

sound (and lack of it) is something that gives aa lot of balance to the game

in brood war you get info when units are made and sounds wben they die. unless an invisible dark templar one shots your units, then no sound

also brood war is the better game