That was one of starcraft 2's game and graphic design criteria: it should be obvious to the viewer even if they don't have the game knowledge. Unfortunately the game flopped fairly hard in term of esport (relatively to expectation) along with the decline of RTS.
Early league of legends's character designs somewhat aims to achieve this as well, it only lasted for a couple of years though. Basically the issue is that when you keep adding content (characters, maps), the complexity just grew too much. Not quite exponentially, but definitely some kind of super-linear.
I think this is one advantage of traditional board games (chess, go) and sports in comparison to Esports. If I spend a couple years of my life learning the basics of Go, 10 years from now on, I will still be able to appreciate the game all the same. Can't say the same for any kind of esports -- and I did spend thousand of hours in a couple of them.
I think I fall into that camp of people of love RTS games, but find it too stressful to play competitively. I like to turtle up and build my cool base and then run over the enemy with a wave of tanks. Command & Conquer was my jam.
Between SC1 and 2 I probably played a couple dozen straight up competitive matches. I much, much, much prefer custom games/'use map settings' in SC1 parlance, or good old co-op comp-stomps.
That's something I enjoy about Age of Empires 2 lobbies - you can hop into a big 8 player FFA, two people are clearly going to dominate, two people are building cute little NPC bases, and everyone else is in between. The focus is off you, but you still have your own little drama trying to do your best in a chaotic world.
I don't think it flopped, but the casual userbase hasn't grown much. I chalk that up to Blizzard's failure to give Custom games more of a spotlight and the overall game being overtaken by MOBA and FPS-battle-royale games.
Early league of legends's character designs somewhat aims to achieve this as well, it only lasted for a couple of years though. Basically the issue is that when you keep adding content (characters, maps), the complexity just grew too much. Not quite exponentially, but definitely some kind of super-linear.
I think this is one advantage of traditional board games (chess, go) and sports in comparison to Esports. If I spend a couple years of my life learning the basics of Go, 10 years from now on, I will still be able to appreciate the game all the same. Can't say the same for any kind of esports -- and I did spend thousand of hours in a couple of them.
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