Caltrops - Gamerasutra - My response to Monty still stands

Forum Overview :: Gamerasutra

by Senor Barborito 08/28/2003, 4:34pm PDT

Any game in which rushing is the only viable method of winning is not a real-time strategy game, because the strategy never differs - there were plenty of ways in the original C&C to turtle and retort to a rush with a variation on 'the enemy's gate is down.' Turtling and rushing were very, very evenly balanced. There were HUNDREDS of variations along this theme for Total Annihilation - to the point where good players became honestly lost in the possibility-space. There was a unit, way back when, that would link your enemy's production to your own to some extent - one of the largest cash-prize matches in Total Annilihation history was won when somebody used said units and then purposefully shut down his own energy production while his units rolled in - the enemy could no longer power any of his base defenses and lost almost immediately. This entire strategy of 'mutual sabotage' was unheard of before that match, just like not all chess strategies have yet been adequately explored.

Starcraft does not have viable strategies outside of 'rush', and thus to my thinking is more of a clicking and min/max exercise than it is a strategy game. For some reason Monty missed that in his second response in that conversation and thought that people having different conceptions of 'min/max' was the same as having viable strategies outside of 'rush rush rush.' Frenzied clicking and tweaked build orders does not a game make, and I've long hated Blizzard RTSes for this reason. C&C fell victim in further incarnations.

Much like Everquest, mindlessness apparently sells quite handsomely.

--SB