About 10% of Stars there’s one guaranteed, no doubt winner from day 1. There’s probably 10% of players who when they play, they’re guaranteed to win or at least make finals.
10-15% of players can’t win no matter what because they’re just that hated.
The other 80% of players can use a mix of strategy and creation of a narrative to win provided there’s not a guaranteed winner from day 1 (again, 1/10 games)
The importance of narratives and strategies varies week by week. To me that is just a part of the brilliance of the game.
Whatever, just have fun while you play. Sometimes you might surprise yourself with the support you can gain by the way you play and/or the way you interact with the public.
Strategy does matter in stars… but that strategy isn’t limited to playing with the 15 other players in the game, nor is it limited to that 1 week you’re actually in the game. Stars is a PR strategy game and you must treat it as such if you hope to eventually win.
At the end of the day, you should always at least play for finals because even if you don’t win, racking up finals just looks impressive.
I think people fall into the "X PERSON WAS GUARANTEED WINNER DAY 1!!!!!" a LOT more often than they should, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy a lot of times because of it. There are favorites to win in a lot of casts, sure, but there are plenty of workarounds.
Deciding you think X person will win so you decide to flavor them in double digits is giving in, not coming up with a work-around and seeing if you can change the course. If you have someone like that in your cast, why give them a bigger storyline with frequent nominations that you know they will survive?
Like this game, yes Cromatique is a favorite to win, but looking at the cast, there were several other people I could see as potential winners, it's up to them to figure out how to control the narrative and get the public on their side.
