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[unholyevil]

Who plays?  I have been playing since Brood War and was in the early SC2 beta.  I play Toss and am low diamond 1v1.

[$#@RP $#()()TR]

Gotta love SC2, iv bought the SC1 battlechest back in 05 or something, and have been hooked ever since! Im not much for ranked matches, i prefer some good old tower defense!

[XavierMace]

Bought it, got bored with it, went back to deeper strategy games.

[BHunter83]

Bought it, got bored with it, went back to deeper strategy games.

I remember getting the Battle-Chest and playing it until I upgraded my computer, thus rendering the game obsolete. I agree, after a while it gets dull, that's why I play Empire: Total War. Overrunning a French outpost with thousands of Cherokee is never boring.

[XavierMace]

I was talking about SC2.

[Atilla]

haven't played SC2 but i loved the original and brood war.

[CottonTheMoth]

I miss sprites. It just doesn't feel the same. Same thing for the Command and Conquer series with Generals. The genre doesn't have that appeal to me anymore because of it. Even Roller Coaster Tycoon lol. I learned to type growing up by typing in cheat codes for SC1 and Brood War .

I mean look at those purple-striped grenadiers. So BA.

[aznriptide859]

No match for mammoth tanks though. XD

[Atilla]

Command and Conquer

I AM PREPARED TO DIE!

[mythe]

Bought it, got bored with it, went back to deeper strategy games.

After you get into it more the strategy gets deeper although at first I was disappointed too.  Pretty much all of the races can just macro and attack move their armies into the other guy's base without paying too much attention at lower levels.
I liked broodwar a lot but pretty much everyone stopped playing now so I switched to SC2 a few weeks ago. 

[aznriptide859]

Korea still plays BW lol. All competitive SC playing in the US has already switched to SC2.

[XavierMace]

After you get into it more the strategy gets deeper although at first I was disappointed too.  Pretty much all of the races can just macro and attack move their armies into the other guy's base without paying too much attention at lower levels.
I liked broodwar a lot but pretty much everyone stopped playing now so I switched to SC2 a few weeks ago.  

No it doesn't.  People say the same thing about SC1.  Well, I guess technically it gets deeper to the extent that it had no depth at first.  It doesn't come close to holding a candle to games like World in Conflict, Company of Heroes/Dawn of War, Total War, Warlords Battlecry.  I'd even have to say games like Rise of Nations, Empire Earth, Sins of a Solar Empire, and Earth 2160 have more depth as well.

[unholyevil]

After you get into it more the strategy gets deeper although at first I was disappointed too.  Pretty much all of the races can just macro and attack move their armies into the other guy's base without paying too much attention at lower levels.
I liked broodwar a lot but pretty much everyone stopped playing now so I switched to SC2 a few weeks ago. 

A-moving in anything above plat isn't going to work out too well (although there are still plenty of scrubs that will A move into HT's).

Deeper how?  SC requires speed and timing unlike any other RTS I have played.  Watching pro level players crank out 300+ APMs (without spam) is quite impressive.

[mythe]

Hmm, SC is hard to describe.  Even though there aren't a huge amount of units and skills, there's a massive amount of combinations, tricks, and stuff you can do.  It's an extremely precise game and the units are so controllable. 
If you were to think of it like a fps, many others might have more weapons, more customization, more skills, more features and stuff.  SC is simpler but it gives you such fluid, dynamic, and complete control.

[XavierMace]

Huh.  Massive Amount of combination's?  More unit's = more combination.  That's basic math.  By tricks and stuff you mean glitching?  Or you mean basic tactics like you can use in any other type of strategy game on the planet?  More complete control?  HOW?  You mean the lack of formations?  No sort of cover system?  No interaction with environment beyond "can I go here?  yes/no"?  Admittedly, I haven't played in a while but I've yet to see someone counter mass Void Rays.  It's no different than the first one in that regards.  When it gets right down to it, all you have to do is hold off the enemy long enough to mass units.

You want a game that allows you to do more with less?  Play Company of Heroes or World in Conflict.  I put Starcraft 2 in the same bucket I put SupCom2 (this coming from someone who loved the first one).  Games has the depth of paper so they made it shiny to attract people that can't hack actual strategy games.

[unholyevil]

Starcraft requires individual unit micro unlike most other games.  Smaller armies can mean more technical battles.  Early game stuff is always interesting when there are only a few units involved as the attention to micro is incredible.  Having a formation button would make it too easy to arrange your units, its all about the hotkeys and speed in SC.  There is high/low ground and visibility has been changed in how you can see up ramps from SC1.  The problem with SC is that lower level players will only see it as a "play defense/mass single unit" game.  Can you 1 base mass void rays and win?  Sure, against a low level player.  If you dare try that against someone above platinum league, you will lose hard.  SC1 BW is still the best RTS in terms of how much skill it requires to play and play well.

[aznriptide859]

XM have you ever watched a Korean SC tournament?

[XavierMace]

Being all about hot keys and speed is not the same as requiring more tactics nor does it mean the game is deep.  Starcraft is almost purely a game of speed.  What are you defining as skill to claim that SC1 is the best RTS in terms of how much skill it requires to play and what are you comparing it to?  That's the same defense I hear every time someone argues for Starcraft.  Don't get me wrong I played Starcraft for a long time and still break it out on occasion at LAN parties.  But it is one of the simplest RTS's ever made and requires very little strategy.  The fact that my brother can actual win at it is proof of that.  :p

"Having a formation button would make it too easy"?  So having a lack of normal RTS controls is now a feature?  High/Low functionality is certainly nothing new and to that end Starcraft 2 doesn't even do that good of a job at it.  Even when Starcraft 1 came out, it did NOTHING new.  It however did it very well which is why Blizzard succeeds.  I have to ask at this point what other RTS's you play because I find most people with this argument for Starcraft have really only played Starcraft for any length of time.

If you honestly think Starcraft requires more skill to play than any other RTS, I'd be happy to challenge you to one of those other "lowly" RTS to put that to the test.  Theoretically you should only need a basic understanding of how the game works to beat me with your Starcraft refined skills, right?

Here's a list of things found in multiple other RTS that greatly increase the depth of the game yet Starcraft lacks.  Let's start with the basics.

1.  Superweapons (IE nukes).  Given your argument against massing units, you should like this one.  Superweapons are a key in any strategy game.  You don't even necessarily have to use them.  It's the fact that you COULD use them.  Supreme Commander on is one of the bests in this regard.  Nukes were truly a weapon to be feared.  The fact that your opponent COULD use them required you to either account for them in your base defenses or be prepared to lose everything.  The SC nuke (1 and 2) is a joke.  It's more of an annoyance than a weapon of mass destruction.

2.  Play Area/Map Size
While this is certainly not a requirement for a good RTS, I've certainly never played one where I've said "I just wish the maps were smaller".  Small map sizes has little to do with tactics and more to do with speed.  Proper Zerg Rushing requires a specific memorized build order but even with that it only works because the maps are so small.  With larger maps, unit speed and view distances become a much larger factor as well as proper recons and patrols.  Sins of a Solar Empire is probably champion in this regard.  When you are playing on a multiple star system map, taking your fleet to another star system to do battle means leaving your planets all but defenseless.  Getting your fleet back to friendly territory is no small order.  There's no Arbiter recall or Nydus canal.  You've got to hoof it back the old fashioned way.

3.  Weapon Ranges
Starcraft barely scratches the surface on this one as well.  By most standards the siege tanks range is laughable.  Check out Supreme Commander or Company of Heroes to see how Artillery is supposed to work.  There's a reason we have things like MLRS's in real life.

4.  Unit Experience
Here's another category that's become pretty much the norm and is completely ignored by Starcraft.  Unit kills lots of things, unit gets better at killing.  Pretty simple concept.  The better this is implemented the more you start to value units.  No more wasting a horde of units just to take out an ancillary resource production facility.  I find this one especially amusing since you make mention of the attention to microing.  I'll spend a lot of time microing a high level unit to get him in and our of a combat situation as quickly and safely as possible.

5.  Interactive/Destructive Environment
This one is HUGE when you want to start talking about depth and tactics.  Company of Heroes/Dawn of War is unmatched in that regard although World in Conflict isn't bad either.  There's no such thing as just "hey troop go here" or "oh, I'll do attack move to be safe".  You want your troops to make use of cover.  Company of Heroes is FANTASTIC in that regards.  Cover can make or break a battle.

6.  Multiple Damage/Resistance Types
I'm not talking about just calling it different things like Starcraft does.  I'm talking about units doing multiple types of damage and having to account for it.  Warlords Battlecry takes the crown on that one although Earth 2160 gets honorable mention.  With 7 different types of damage (each with it's own effects) and corresponding resistances that game was unmatched for having to properly counter something.  If you take a group of fire mages and trying to attack Daemons (which have like a base 80% resistance to fire) your mages are going to get raped.

7.  General/Hero units.  Sins of a Solar Empire (SoaSE), Dawn of War, and Supreme Commander really shine here.  There's no greater "oh ****" moment than seeing a General/Hero unit coming right as your troops are deployed.  A single capital ship in SoaSE can hold off a small fleet on it's own, especially when leveled up.  A Dark Eldar Avatar (Dawn of War) can lay waste to your whole army if you aren't careful.  A single experimental unit (Supreme Commander) can level your base if you aren't careful.  This ties in with with unit experience as well.  If you find a hero off on it's own, you had better hit it while you can.  If you wait until it regroups, that's going to cost you.

Once again, I wouldn't say Starcraft is a BAD game by any means.  It certainly has it's place is gaming.  But I play Starcraft when I'm just wanting to get some quick gaming in.  I play SupCom or SofSE when I want to settle in and really play strategy.  It's like comparing checkers and chess.  Sure, checkers technically requires some skill but it's pretty limited in depth.

XM have you ever watched a Korean SC tournament?

Yes.  Have you?  I've played against a few Korean players as well.  I got raped playing against them.  Why?  Not because they had better tactics.  Because they were faster.  We had the exact same strategy.  They just executed it first.

[kornkob]

SC is the Quake3 Tourney of RTS.   Solid game that requires reflexes as a primary 'skill'.   

[XavierMace]

^^

This.

You just said it in one line rather than one hundred.

[kornkob]

I cheated: I spent 5 years in the production end of the game industry.  

And worked on Quake 4.

[XavierMace]

No fair.

[mythe]

SC is the Quake3 Tourney of RTS.   Solid game that requires reflexes as a primary 'skill'.   

^Yea, that

SC also has a huge player base and battle.net and they had it really early on too.  A lot of games like AOE were awesome but connecting to other players was a pain and you were pretty much limited to playing your friends. 
And yea, SC does cut a lot of features like formations.  It just requires the player to make up with apm which is where micro comes in.  Most other games are not as apm intensive.  That sort of just makes SC more fast paced and focused on low leveled basic functions.
Stuff like mass void rays aren't necessarily countered by units, they can be easily countered by proper scouting and a well timed attack.  A mass army of voidrays would also probably lose to a pure marine army of the same cost, the difference being that the marine army will be on the field well before the voidray army is completed and can be replaced much faster.
And by controllable units I mean by how units fighting each other win based on the player's skill, not just on their stats.  A lot of units are extremely effective counters only if you know how to use them.  For instance, vultures counter zerglings and zealots but not if you just leave them there shooting.  Goliaths wreck carriers but only if you know when to target interceptors and when to target the carriers.

A good terran player will be able to defeat a protoss player making dragoons and zealots with only vultures in a properly microed rush.  Dragoons are actually the counter unit to vultures, but with proper control vultures can still beat them with mines and just by simply avoiding them.
Also, it's not that difficult to max out your production early game.  Decent players are pretty much getting the same amount of units at the same time, Koreans aren't pumping out double your units in early game.  If you had a scenario where one terran player had 2 tanks and 5 vultures defending his base  behind a wall and a protoss player had a shuttle, 1 reaver, 2 zealots, and 3 dragoons, the battle would be based purely on skill and control.

In something like AOE calvary will kill swordsmen no matter what you do, unless one of the players makes some huge mistake.

[kornkob]

And that does not make it 'better' or 'more skillful', it describes that which is unique to SC.   

[XavierMace]

AOE was no more of a deep strategy game than SC.  Not sure how that came into the conversation.  Once again though speed is not the same as strategy.  You can have depth and still require speed.  Proper counters and micromanaging units does not require small unit counts or limited combination's.  SC is as much about memorizing hot keys as formulating tactics.  That fact that you can make a statement like "It just requires the player to make up with apm" shows why I don't consider it a good, deep strategy game.  It's fun to be sure.  But if you've making a poorly thought out attack, just being faster than the other guy shouldn't be a deciding factor in your outcome.  To use your AOE example, a group of cavalry SHOULD pound on a group of swordsman.  That's how life works, that's what pikemen are for.

I keep going back to Sins of a Solar Empire because it is a VERY solid strategy game and the perfect example of APM and speed not requiring a limited functionality game.  When you have a battle involving hundreds of ships on both sides, victory is very much a matter of who better utilities his fleet's abilities and who has better combat tactics.