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How do you win a game of StarCraft? That is a complicated question and the subject of our next topic: Win Conditions in Competitive Modes.
Compared to the objectives of other popular esports titles (kill the nexus, plant the bomb, bring your opponent’s health to zero, score the most points), StarCraft’s objective is vague: in order to win, you have to eliminate all of your opponents’ structures. In practice, this is almost never fulfilled; instead, the true win condition of StarCraft is demoralizing your opponent(s) to the point that they leave the game. Sounds fun, right?
For newer players, this objective can be confusing, as often the best way to achieve that goal is, counterintuitively, to NOT attack your opponents’ buildings. Furthermore, there is no step-by-step methodology to direct players towards the official win condition.
Another challenge of this win condition is that because there’s no concept of points scored, damage done, or towers killed, it can be difficult for players to tell if they’re winning. Have you ever had a game where you felt like you were pushed to your limits and eked out the victory by a hair only to find that you were up 30 workers or 50 supply the entire time? This ambiguity and uncertainty can lead to unnecessary stress, which contributes to the high-octane nature of RTS.
At the same time, it could be argued that the open-ended nature of the win condition grants players more room to express themselves through their play.
Linking it back to our previous discussion topic, teams, there’s potential in RTS team games to eliminate a player permanently, something which is not commonly found in other team-based esports, where either revive or end-of-round mechanics are commonplace.
Finally, the open-ended aspect of the traditional RTS win condition leads to highly variable game lengths. This isn’t necessarily a positive or a negative, but we have heard from friends in esports production that StarCraft has THE highest variability in match length. While this could potentially prevent players from queuing if they have only10 minutes, there’s the added potential excitement of players knowing they could win (or lose) at any time.
All-in-all, it’s a lot to think about, and we wonder if there's an opportunity to innovate on this often-ignored aspect of RTS game design. As always, we turn it over to you with a few questions to think about:
- What are some other aspects of the standard Blizzard RTS win condition you’d like to highlight?
- What are examples of alternative win conditions you’ve found particularly engaging in other RTS games?
- What are examples of win conditions in other non-RTS games you’ve found particularly engaging?
- Based on the discussion so far in this thread, do you have any personal thoughts or conclusions about objectives in RTS?
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