In StarCraft Brood War there were normal maps, which were mostly played 1v1. That was the "true" game - it was fun but also quite difficult.
Many players played for fun, so they would play team games e.g. 4v4 where skill still mattered but often the results depended more who you got on your team (I think that to a degree this is why MOBAs are so popular - in theory you get close to a 50-50 winrate, or at least win like 30% games even if you are bad).
Some players enjoyed a map called "Big game hunters" (or BGH for short) where you didnt have to care much about resources - they were abundand in your starting location. So you didnt have to think about building new bases (big part of regular StarCraft gameplay). In fact even more simplified "fastest" maps were made, where resources were stacked near every player's starting point and the map was basically a square with some choke points. The layout was simplistic too. It could still be fun and better player wouod still win. But again most players played team games like 4v4 where you could always blame your loss on your team.
Then the players played a map called "Blood bath" that was incredibly small - so games could be shorter (few minutes), since players would often "rush" (=attack quickly) each other to win or lose fast.
Those simplifications that removed part of the main game loop were still fun. Often by making the game a bit easier. (Although I remember some challenge between "regular" players and "BGH" players wherr BGH players won, since they know how to play BGH and they were good enough to win on a regular map).
Then StarCraft Brood War had thousands of custom games, which had deep ability yo customize the game and a primitive programming language - that allowed to completely change the way the game worked. MOBA genere, turret defence - all came from StarCraft Brood War custom games.
I think that apart from Warcraft3 no other game allowed so much custom maps from the stock (without mods). In Starcraft 1 and Warcraft 3 you would just download the custom map and play it.
Starcraft 2 never managed to get custom maps as popular due to Blizzard's mismanagment: no custom game list. Also Blizzard was probably trying to monetize custom games/maps but failed.
Designers often ignore that (1) there are bad players that still want to win sometimes even due to sheer luck (2) some players want relatively braindead simplistic fun.
I think in Fortnite they have a popular custom map that is a big square arena where both materials and ammo are infinite. Again a simplification, but at the same time a lot of the essence of the game is still there (shooting and building).
I also remember really enjoying these “Champions” customs where you had one strong unit that was modded to be even stronger and you had to progress through a map of obstacles and enemies. It totally took the resources/build part out of the equation and just focused on movement and combat.
IIRC, the entire MOBA genre was actually spawned from a Warcraft 3 custom map (the original DOTA?)
The bummer is, we can still play the single player campaigns of Star/Warcraft but those days of weirdo custom maps are likely gone for good.
The original Defense of the Ancients custom map for Warcraft 3 was heavily influenced by a StarCraft custom map called Aeons of Strife (iirc). It is probably the first proto-MOBA.
It’s true that it was Defense of the Ancients (or more properly, the DotA Allstars variant) that birthed the MOBA genre.
Two UMS ("use map settings" which is what we referred to custom maps as, named after the game settings) maps that I loved and were quite popular on aus-1 (our local non-battle.net server) were variants of "zergling blood" which was somewhat like a tower defence where you had to live against auto-waves of enemies, and various RPG-like games where you controlled one unit to go through a complex map and finish it while levelling up (and changing unit type), often with some choice of upgrades. I have never been someone who liked modding games, but custom experiences like this were so fun. All you had to do was join the lobby and it would automatically download.
Not sure if they work with the recent SC remaster, but I think there was some kind of debacle around it with Warcraft Reforged? It might have been patched in by now.
Warcraft 3 was where DOTA really came from, I played it when it was Aeon of Strife. And there were other similar maps (one was "mechwarrior" and there was also Force Majeure) and some actually hard leveling RPGs that you'd generally die midway through on. Good stuff.
Warcraft 2 to Starcraft to Warcraft 3 is an interesting heritage for League and DOTA that I haven't thought of. This is what happens after 20 years of purebreeding, gross it's deformed and toxic towards humans.
And then the MOBA genetics was crossbred with Team Fortress 2 to produce... Overwatch. A hideous shell of its former self both mematically and in gameplay. Twisted and evil, a dark and toxic degeneracy of the gameplay you once knew and loved.
The success of DOTA might be why Blizzard added a clause[1] to Warcraft 3 Reforged that gives them control of any custom maps.
It's pretty sad to think how generous games used to be to their user base. Both in terms of content and what you could do with that content. Modern games are a much more controlled experience and I think we're all worse off for it.
Many players played for fun, so they would play team games e.g. 4v4 where skill still mattered but often the results depended more who you got on your team (I think that to a degree this is why MOBAs are so popular - in theory you get close to a 50-50 winrate, or at least win like 30% games even if you are bad).
Some players enjoyed a map called "Big game hunters" (or BGH for short) where you didnt have to care much about resources - they were abundand in your starting location. So you didnt have to think about building new bases (big part of regular StarCraft gameplay). In fact even more simplified "fastest" maps were made, where resources were stacked near every player's starting point and the map was basically a square with some choke points. The layout was simplistic too. It could still be fun and better player wouod still win. But again most players played team games like 4v4 where you could always blame your loss on your team.
Then the players played a map called "Blood bath" that was incredibly small - so games could be shorter (few minutes), since players would often "rush" (=attack quickly) each other to win or lose fast.
Those simplifications that removed part of the main game loop were still fun. Often by making the game a bit easier. (Although I remember some challenge between "regular" players and "BGH" players wherr BGH players won, since they know how to play BGH and they were good enough to win on a regular map).
Then StarCraft Brood War had thousands of custom games, which had deep ability yo customize the game and a primitive programming language - that allowed to completely change the way the game worked. MOBA genere, turret defence - all came from StarCraft Brood War custom games. I think that apart from Warcraft3 no other game allowed so much custom maps from the stock (without mods). In Starcraft 1 and Warcraft 3 you would just download the custom map and play it.
Starcraft 2 never managed to get custom maps as popular due to Blizzard's mismanagment: no custom game list. Also Blizzard was probably trying to monetize custom games/maps but failed.
Designers often ignore that (1) there are bad players that still want to win sometimes even due to sheer luck (2) some players want relatively braindead simplistic fun.
I think in Fortnite they have a popular custom map that is a big square arena where both materials and ammo are infinite. Again a simplification, but at the same time a lot of the essence of the game is still there (shooting and building).