Let's go down the list of things Flash needs to do:
He needs to click on every one of his production structures every 15-19 seconds, and click M or C. Otherwise, no army.
He needs to click on every one of his command centers every 13 seconds, and click s. Otherwise, no workers.
He then needs to tell every newly built worker to go mine, otherwise they just stand around doing nothing.
He needs to build supply depots roughly every 20 seconds, or his entire production grinds to a halt.
His army consists of well over a hundred marines and medics, which Flash needs to stim, split, and maneuver to take on lurkers and defilers who will crush him in an unmicro'd fight.
His science vessels need to be irradiating defilers constantly to prevent the Zerg reaching critical mass, while dodging scourge using the Chinese triangle technique.
If Flash just clicks his science vessel hotkey and casts irradiate, every ship on that control group will waste its irradiate on the same target - he needs to manually select each vessel before casting spells.
His entire army, and his scans, must be controlled with just 10 group hotkeys of at most 12 units each. Except for buildings, of which you can have at most 1 hotkeyed.
To maximize speed of his army going up and down ramps, he needs to spam-click the move command. A single instruction causes the units at the back to spaz out and take a long time to do anything.
As the above implies, Brood War unit AI is terribad.
Which means everything Flash does above needs to be double and triple checked to ensure the AI doesn't decide to go off and pick its nose. Building supply depots was especially bad for this.
Brood War is a game that no human being will ever play perfectly. Even the top tier professionals, like Flash, Bisu, or Jaedong, can't do all of the above all the time - they have to prioritize some activities over others and treat their actions per minute like a resource the same as minerals and gas.
>Granted, this is maybe because I played SC1 more on LAN, and there wasn't all the metagame going on. But I think SC2 really does focus on "grinding" and rote learning to get better, probably this was chosen to make it more "eSports"-like.
Starcraft 2 is a game I could get to masters league in, despite only playing make a few hours a week for a month or two. In Brood War, that much practice wouldn't get you D ranking on ICCUP. Everything about SC2 is designed from the ground up to lower the grinding, remove the muscle memory requirement (you don't get to "play" Protoss in BW until you can hit your P key blindfolded), and encourage new or unskilled players to get on and play. At that it succeeded, albeit kind of at the cost of its professional scene.
Mid-way through WoL and again shortly after launch of HoTS.
I played BW a lot as a kid, and the fundamental concepts carry over pretty decently. Always build workers, don't get supply blocked, expand as fast as your opponent lets you get away with, never let your resources bank, upgrades are always worth it, etc. etc.
As I recall someone in WoL actually went from bronze to masters building literally no units except marines, medivacs, and scvs to prove the point raw mechanics are all you need to carry you up the ladder.
To be fair marines and medivacs are amazing units in WoL. The same likely wouldn't apply with most other two unit combo. Roach ling maybe, maybe blink stalkers.
Brood War is the most mechanically demanding game I have ever played, and certainly the most demanding that has ever been an esport.
[This clip](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXH8eCcvQMI) of Flash playing SK Terran style is illustrative of what I mean.
Let's go down the list of things Flash needs to do:
He needs to click on every one of his production structures every 15-19 seconds, and click M or C. Otherwise, no army.
He needs to click on every one of his command centers every 13 seconds, and click s. Otherwise, no workers.
He then needs to tell every newly built worker to go mine, otherwise they just stand around doing nothing.
He needs to build supply depots roughly every 20 seconds, or his entire production grinds to a halt.
His army consists of well over a hundred marines and medics, which Flash needs to stim, split, and maneuver to take on lurkers and defilers who will crush him in an unmicro'd fight.
His science vessels need to be irradiating defilers constantly to prevent the Zerg reaching critical mass, while dodging scourge using the Chinese triangle technique.
If Flash just clicks his science vessel hotkey and casts irradiate, every ship on that control group will waste its irradiate on the same target - he needs to manually select each vessel before casting spells.
His entire army, and his scans, must be controlled with just 10 group hotkeys of at most 12 units each. Except for buildings, of which you can have at most 1 hotkeyed.
To maximize speed of his army going up and down ramps, he needs to spam-click the move command. A single instruction causes the units at the back to spaz out and take a long time to do anything.
As the above implies, Brood War unit AI is terribad.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCpUsmuQG3E
Which means everything Flash does above needs to be double and triple checked to ensure the AI doesn't decide to go off and pick its nose. Building supply depots was especially bad for this.
Brood War is a game that no human being will ever play perfectly. Even the top tier professionals, like Flash, Bisu, or Jaedong, can't do all of the above all the time - they have to prioritize some activities over others and treat their actions per minute like a resource the same as minerals and gas.
>Granted, this is maybe because I played SC1 more on LAN, and there wasn't all the metagame going on. But I think SC2 really does focus on "grinding" and rote learning to get better, probably this was chosen to make it more "eSports"-like.
Starcraft 2 is a game I could get to masters league in, despite only playing make a few hours a week for a month or two. In Brood War, that much practice wouldn't get you D ranking on ICCUP. Everything about SC2 is designed from the ground up to lower the grinding, remove the muscle memory requirement (you don't get to "play" Protoss in BW until you can hit your P key blindfolded), and encourage new or unskilled players to get on and play. At that it succeeded, albeit kind of at the cost of its professional scene.