I only played a little bit of Red Alert 2. And quite a bit of StarCraft, although non-competitively.
The complexity difference was sort of interesting I think. I recall there was a lot more… stuff the units could do. Basic infantry for one side could lay down, take cover behind sand bags (maybe?), garrison in NPC buildings. Gain experience and level up. And these are just the most basic dudes.
It is neat stuff that makes the game feel good to pick up and play. But designed in complexity in a game can get in the way of developing emergent complexity. I think this is particularly noticeable in an RTS, where there’s already a lot going on.
StarCraft Marines only really have like one thing they can do (stim), otherwise it’s just positioning. This promotes the whole emergent “micro” gameplay skill. Which isn’t to say micro doesn’t exist in C&C (I have no idea what competitive play looks like there), but there are a lot of alternatives (Deploy them? Let them go prone?).
I knew a guy who was high level RA player and he said that the high level game mostly revolved around 2 types of units: tanks and dogs - where you would send the dogs to bait out first shot and then your tanks to finish the job.
What Starcraft 1 does very well and what many other games cannot really emulate is the dynamics of units - that the battles can happen across the whole map - because few units are often still significant enough. There is obviously the whole "death ball" concept too - but Starcraft Brood War is full of mechanics that actually go against the death ball - for example siege tanks, or psionic storm that just annihilate clumped units. This never existed in Westwood games, what meant that most games were mostly just sitting in one place and building 50 tanks.
The whole "you can garrison marines in a building" thing in RA2 was nice.. but at the end again it was static defense.
It seems like it worked OK for campaign mode. It still is a perfectly reasonable choice but especially at the time, to prioritize the single player mode over the competitive scene.
The complexity difference was sort of interesting I think. I recall there was a lot more… stuff the units could do. Basic infantry for one side could lay down, take cover behind sand bags (maybe?), garrison in NPC buildings. Gain experience and level up. And these are just the most basic dudes.
It is neat stuff that makes the game feel good to pick up and play. But designed in complexity in a game can get in the way of developing emergent complexity. I think this is particularly noticeable in an RTS, where there’s already a lot going on.
StarCraft Marines only really have like one thing they can do (stim), otherwise it’s just positioning. This promotes the whole emergent “micro” gameplay skill. Which isn’t to say micro doesn’t exist in C&C (I have no idea what competitive play looks like there), but there are a lot of alternatives (Deploy them? Let them go prone?).