Pretty much. Blizzard supported the hell out of that game. Tweaked everything until it was perfect. At launch, it was as good as anything else at the time, but it wasn’t knife-edge balanced like it became.
Modern Blizzard isn’t capable of that anymore, and neither is anyone else. The genre can still innovate and provide perfectly good experiences otherwise, but it will always have this spectre of “not balanced like Starcraft” hanging over it.
The genre can still innovate and provide perfectly good experiences otherwise, but it will always have this spectre of “not balanced like Starcraft” hanging over it.
Which is weird, because if you have a 3 faction RTS, the simplest, most balanced solution is to copy Rock, Paper, Scissors.
StarCraft killed it by being too fucking good.
Pretty much. Blizzard supported the hell out of that game. Tweaked everything until it was perfect. At launch, it was as good as anything else at the time, but it wasn’t knife-edge balanced like it became.
Modern Blizzard isn’t capable of that anymore, and neither is anyone else. The genre can still innovate and provide perfectly good experiences otherwise, but it will always have this spectre of “not balanced like Starcraft” hanging over it.
Which is weird, because if you have a 3 faction RTS, the simplest, most balanced solution is to copy Rock, Paper, Scissors.