Hey now, put the torches down, there's no need to burn my house down just yet. Yes I know that as far as most RTS players are concerned I just uttered a heresy right up there with spreading the glories of Tzeentch on an Imperial shrine world but let me explain. First off, I understand why Starcraft is popular and enjoyed by other people, and it was actually the first RTS I ever played and got me into the genre. So, why would I say I hate it? Well, its just that I can't stand the gameplay, mainly because of my favorite game of all time, Dawn of War 2, and its accompanying expansions Chaos Rising and Retribution.
For those of you who don't know, either because they could care less about this tactical rubbish, or because they've had their heads stuck firmly in the sand, allow me to explain. Dawn of War is an RTS series that takes place in that most wonderful of worlds, Warhammer 40k. The first game wasn't that different from most RTS', you build buildings to advance your tech tree and get the really tasty units out there to blow stuff up. However, it did something that few other games did, or did well. Squad-based combat. Meaning that when you build a unit that unit is one full squad and not just one marine picking his nose, instead you get four marines picking their noses!
Now, I'm fairly certain there might have been a few other games, but none that took it to the degree that Dawn of War did. In Dawn of War you could increase the total number of soldiers in the squad, after they'd been built. So you had a squad of Fire Warriors and they were under fire? Heh, click the squad and reinforce them with a few more warriors, increase their damage output. For that matter for most of the races, virtually every unit, whether infantry, hero, or vehicle had at least one special ability that could rearrange the odds. This meant that in a battle you always had some option you could take, using your current forces that could turn the tide in your favor. So long as you were smart and knew how to use these abilities.
Lets check in with Starcraft, which did none of that. No matter what kind of unit you built, whether it was a giant space cruiser or one tiny little marine picking his nose, you only ever built one. Back then it didn't bother me because I was a naive youngster who couldn't even beat the fourth level of the Terran campaign without cheats. However, Dawn of War and my addiction to logic opened my eyes. With vehicles having just the one is okay, but what kind of stupid military power would send just one marine into the thick of things? Every military group, even the really old blokes with equipment made of bronze sent their forces out in squads. However, it was probably easier to program it that way and there might have been a lot of difficulties, same with the only being able to select twelve at a time. So I tend to let that part slide.
However, remember that little bit I mentioned about the abilities? Well in Starcraft they decided that they'd give all the useful abilities to one or two units per faction, and then give a few more abilities that did either fuck all or actually hurt you. Case in point, the stimpack for the marines and firebats. Now, all of you Starcraft experts better not come whinin' about how the stimpack is useful you just have to use it right. I say, its useless. whatever benefits it gives you in attack are ruined by the fact that it damages your goddamned unit. I hated the thing, I like units that can dish out a lot of damage and take a lot as well. Generally a unit that hurts itself to do the former does not qualify.
Even with those two units I might have forgiven the game, but those two units abilites are completely dependent upon the situation. If you're fighting the Zerg or the Terran you're observatory's EMP burst does fuck all. Irradiate? Pointless as all hell. The Ghost's Lockdown? Supremely overpowered against Terran or Protoss. Actually just the protoss, since if you're playing the Terrans there's no point in building anything but Marines, Marines, and medics if you have the expansion or sequel. Whenever I play the Terrans, no matter how fancy I try to be, it all comes down to if I made enough marines, because if you don't have enough then it doesn't matter how awesome your other units are, they're FUCKED!!
Lets compare that to the Imperial Guard from Dawn of War. In that faction if you build just your Guardsmen, provided you're enemy's not a complete idiot, you're FUCKED!! While playing as the Space Marines vehicles are merely a form of interesting support, but can still be used to dominate if you don't want to focus on infantry. Oh, by the way did I mention that Dawn of War, at its height had seven factions? I would like to count the two in Soulstorm, but the Dark Eldar sucked, and the Sisters of Battle were weak Space Marines with some crazy abilities. See, each of those seven factions were unique, requiring completely different playstyles and tactics. Assuming of course you weren't fighting a complete idiot.
In Starcraft you could easily get away with building just marines, just hydralisks, or just dragoons, provided you built faster than your opponent. Flash to Dawn of War, where I can break the teeth of any assault with a smaller number of units as long as I use them intelligently. Heck, in Dark Crusade, later in the game your opponents would have to separate computer AI's, meaning two separate armies with their own resources and population caps. Also, yes I know Starcraft did that same damn thing, but here's the thing. Except when playing as the Eldar, who are supposed to be rigid and not very flexible in unit roles, no matter what your army was. If things turned tits up because it wasn't quite designed in the manner needed to crush your enemy, you could change that same army, without having to build a new one from scratch.
Flash back to Starcraft and what you see is there is no customization between units. Every marine, every siege tank, every goliath, is identical. If you built an army specializing in anti-air and your enemy army is largely ground based, you're FUCKED! If you build an army covering all the bases, but your enemy focused solely on one area, making a third or more of your army useless you're FUCKED! And the only way to fix it is to go back and build an entirely new army, from the ground up. That was my biggest problem, the fact that in Dawn of War I could always use my current army to win, no matter the circumstances as long as I played smart. While in Starcraft if your army was just a teensy bit off, it was going to be completely slaughtered with no chance at victory.
That's the key thing, its called micromanagement. Specifically of your units. In Starcraft all you could do was tweak your base, pump out a certain number of dudes X and Y and hope you had the right ratio of dude X to dude Y to counter and destroy your enemies ratio of dude X to Y with no real way to alter the battle except to build more. While in Dawn of War the ratio was only mildly important and then it became a matter of how you used and upgraded each specific dude X and Y. So, in conclusion Dawn of War is just all around better than Starcraft. Also Starcraft 2 didn't seem to fix any of the problems that I had. So no, Starcraft 2 isn't all that better. Although, I did like Warcraft.
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