1761

I’ve been watching the videos by ForceSCIIStrategy on youtube to try to improve my game (focusing on terran right now in 1vs1 ladder). I’m about 50% or slightly lower and it’s very nerveracking to me. Sometimes I just get absolutely stomped (like this recent game where it put me against a 4th top ranked platinum player) and it’s really disappointing. I enjoy the challenge and although losing is horribly horribly disappointing I take heart in knowing the harder times get at least eventually I’ll play someone of less skill. Who knows maybe I’ll make platinum in this lifetime (hah!).

1762

I envy those winning 50% of their games. I’m struggling to win 37% of my games, down in the depths of my bronze league. I play between 1 and 3 games a night, and I enjoy most of them. The only games I dislike are the battles that go over 30 or 40 minutes, because I know a lot of that time consists of us slowly building up rather than being aggressive and mixing it up.

In fact, I play terran and my macro skills have gotten a lot better, to the point where lately I’ve noticed that I can win the economic battle but lose the war. The stats/replays afterwards have shown that even though I had more cash, I had a smaller army, my army has no upgrades, and in the largest battles my forces have been too spread out to stop the invaders.

During the last two games I’ve tried to address all of those issues by focusing on just 3 troop types (marines/tanks/vikings or marines/tanks/thors), buying some upgrades (I didn’t even know where to build them until yesterday), and pushing my troops out the front door once my first base starts to run out of minerals and I don’t have to protect it so much. It seems like other terrans don’t do much scouting other than with their scans, so I assign a marine to every mineral location on the map to watch for expansions, and if I have my forces in the middle of the map I can react to new expansions quicker. This has resulted in a couple of satisfying wins.

But even doing that is still pretty defensive. Which race is the most effective at being aggressive? I’d like to join that team and force more early game battles and put all the turtles to the sword. In the bronze league it seems like 80% of the other players are terrans, which is comforting when I’m scouting, but it hasn’t given me much exposure to the styles of the other races, other than knowing void rays are evil. Pure evil.

1763

Afraid you’re using the early game aggression race already, Rob! The key is to use Raiders or Hellions and go to town on those drones/probes/whatever.

1764

Just finished the game on brutal difficulty and I can tell I sorely regretting not buying the reduced friendly fire tech for siege tanks. Get that one.

I’d take a pass on specter upgrades because with things being so frantic I never had the time to micro and use their abilities. Additionally, specters are super slow to produce and cost a lot of precious gas. I think I blew 200K on both upgrades and never used them.

I’m guessing the reaper upgrades would be a bad investment because they are a niche unit. Same with firebats, vultures, and hellions.

I’d pick the flame turrets over the “gun on the bunker” tech, because the gun doesn’t do shit for damage and there are a couple times I think the flame turrets would’ve been really useful.

Some units are pretty crappy without upgrades - both vikings and goliaths get whittled down through attrition without their range upgrades, but with them they can focus fire units down really fast, so get those upgrades if you like them.

Don’t overlook mercenaries. I found the siege tank and banshee mercs invaluable. Over the long haul I’d say the infantry ones are a bad investment, so you can probably pass on the marauder and firebats.

Otherwise, just get upgrades for units you like.

1765

I have both the flame turrets and the gun on the bunker, so while I don’t remember what the alternatives were I am pretty sure they are not paired.

1766

I actually beat the “rescue the General” mission on char (Brutal) with nothing but a single perma-cloaked Spectre and some nukes. I had the tech that lets you drop Barracks units anywhere on the map to put him into the General’s barricade and then just nuked all the Nydus Worms to death.

Overall it’s hard to imagine how often that comes in handy though in the grand scheme of things.

I guess I’d say get Marine, Medic, SCV, and Siege Tank upgrades and then whatever else you want. Vikings might be a good option as well as it’s a pretty straightforwardly useful unit. Those 4-5 units will probably comprise the main bulk of your army throughout the game. You should have hundreds of thousands more credits to experiment and play around with though even if you buy all of these suggestions.

1767

Thanks for the tips guys. I’m restarting my whole campaign LOL.

1768

Yeah Idra is immature and displays very poor sportsmanship. I wouldn’t want to be friends with him in real life. But oh boy is he an awesome Starcraft 2 player! Check out his series against Tester (another great player) in the King of the Beta tournament.

Idra plays an economy focused style. What is so impressive about his play is the way he can sense when his opponent is not going to attack and can afford to pump out more drones to boost his economy. He powers the economy and gets his army ready “just in time” to beat off his opponents attack. When he gets rushed, his response is precisely proportional. Just enough to fend off the rush, but no more, then back to powering the economy.

I see Idra as like those villain characters in American Wrestling WWF. Its fun to see him get beaten. A good hero needs a good villain to rival.

I agree theres a strange contrast between how much I enjoy watching the pro-tournaments, and how little I enjoy playing the actual game. Its like theres this long training/initiation phase you have to push through before you get good enough to enjoy the game the way it is intended to be played. Until then its just “fastest economy wins” with lots of lopsided results. I’ve become an armchair spectator of an armchair sport.

Tony

1769

So, here’s an unrelated query:

Are Roaches a cost-effective method of keeping Ultralisks away from Hydralisks? Or will they get stomped due to the Ultralisks’ damage bonus vs. armoured units?

I thought that despite this weakness, they might still have enough HP to form an effective wall while the Hydras go to work.

Any thoughts?

1770

Ì’ve never played a ZvZ that got further than hydra/muta but ultras DESTROY any armoured units (except mass immortals cause of the hardened shield). They get I think a x3 damage bonus so roaches have less effective hp than hydralisks against them.

Mass hydras is I think the best solution against ultras but honestly ultras are designed to be the grand prize for a zerg player that gets to the end of the tech tree. Nothing on the ground is ‘good’ against them (except kinda immortals) there’s just ok (not armoured stuff that does lots of damage) and bad (anything armoured, anything that does small but rapid amounts of damage like marines and zerglings).

Just keep making hydralisks, harass his econ with speedlings and make sure you get upgrades. It’ll come down to who can keep the better economy going. If he’s coming to you, throwing down some evolution chambers to create roadblocks to your base might help, ultras get stuck easily and hydras can abuse their range.

1771

I don’t know if its because I played a lot of SC1 or what, but I don’t really get angry when I lose in SC2, even if it was something stupid. I think its because I’m still learning and feel like a newbie.

I did get very angry about SC1 though, not on every loss, but typically those that I felt I especially fucked up in.

1772

I think this may be more a function of the level you play at. I’m not great- I’m in Platinum just by my ability to macro- but I played a game the other day where I defended a zerg rush, warp gated 4 DTs into the zerg base, killed both his hatcheries, and still lost 15 minutes later. Admittedly I do still have games where everything is decided by one big punch, although some of that is normal.

1773

I don’t think I am. After my command center and all my SUVs has been blown up, is there any hope of coming back?

I totally appreciate that this is a game of learning and trying different things, etc. I do enjoy that up to a point. And I don’t want to make it sound like I hate the multi-player because I don’t. I just wish that it was possible to learn while playing. Right now it seems like I start a game with the intention of trying something new, it fails, and only after the game is over am I able to watch the replay and see what I did wrong.

I’ve only played about ten or twelve games, so maybe I haven’t given it a fair shake yet.

I’m positive that my complaints are a function of the level I play at ;). For example, the folks up-thread who commented about how they scan because they are supposed to, but don’t really understand what its telling them? That’s my problem as well. I scan my opponent multiple times a game, but it doesn’t help me. I’ll scan him and spot maybe two barracks and a factory. Okay… what now? I don’t know.

The only way I’m going to really grok what the scanned information means to me is to play and play and play some more, and at some point in the future I’ll develop this mysterious “game sense” that people talk about. Meanwhile I’ll have the same complaints.

1774

Like most things in life, experience does play an important factor in performance.

Your enjoyment of something or some game will be different after 10 games than after 500 games. You are probably better at your job after 6 months than after 10 days. There is an element of work to sc2 that if you’re not willing to work at it, you won’t really get the mP experience that you seem to want.

Work involves losing, a lot.

1775

I started my 1v1 placement matches over the weekend. Thanks to the podcast with Demon G Sides, I started using 9 pool, and that gave me the confidence to jump into league play. I am 3-0 on my placement matches, and will probably place in Gold and get stomped forever after.

THANKS DEMON. JERK.

I think the placement matches are screwy, though. I look at the profiles of people after each game, and one of them was in bronze, and the other two were unranked, which I assume must mean they were also doing their placement matches. Isn’t the point of these things supposed to be to pit me against people for which Blizzard has a good idea of skill level, so it can figure out mine?

1776

I totally respect this, and I really admire players who enjoy putting in the self-improvement time to become really good at the game.

My complaint isn’t so much “I wish I was better, but I’m too lazy to become better.” My complaint is more that I’m not finding the game fun while I’m learning it.

This isn’t true of other games, which are fun in and of themselves, even before victory is declared. When I’m playing Civ 4, I’m enjoying managing cities and planning my next move. When I’m playing Left 4 Dead I’m enjoying the spooky atmosphere and the satisfaction of shooting zombies. When I’m playing Bioshock I’m enjoying the environment and the gunplay. All of these different kinds of games were enjoyable for me even when I was at a low skill level. Starcraft 2 is only enjoyable after a win.

Which is totally subjective, right? Different strokes for different folks.

Actually I’m exaggerating - Starcraft 2 is still somewhat enjoyable to play before you win. But I was trying to clarify my point ;).

1777

After my command center and all my SUVs has been blown up, is there any hope of coming back?

If all your SCVs along with your command center have been razed, then yea, things aren’t looking too good, unless you have a nice expansion going or have destroyed all the shit in his base.

Starcraft II multiplayer is absolutely a difficult thing to penetrate. But, as you’ve noted, few things are as exhilarating as a victory. However, what makes the game great is that as you get better you’ll find many more moments to get excited about. Defending the enemy’s big push with some well placed siege tanks, microing your hellions to roast way more zerglings than you thought possible, dropping a perfectly placed nuke and taking out 3/4 of you opponents army, dropping three nukes at the same time…

As you gain more experience with SCII you learn, essentially, how to make the games more exciting and more rewarding because you can make them last longer and have more strategic depth. If you stick with it you’ll eventually learn what to do differently if that Protoss player has two warpgates in his base verses four warpgates (if he has four, you better have a good wall-in). Your macro muscle memory will become good enough that you actually have time to fly a medivac around to the back of your opponents base while you push your other force at his front. The better you get at the game, the more strategy opens up to you.

That being said, as amazing as I find Starcraft II, it’s not for everyone. Try as I might, I simply can’t get my roommate into the multiplayer experience. He’s not wiling to put every ounce of his concentration into a 30-minute, intense-as-hell match. As much as I hate to admit it sometimes, I understand that. Videogames are supposed to be fun, not work.

If anyone ever wants to practice, I’m more than willing. My character name is Vincent and I’m almost certain my code is 592. I can be somewhat sporadic with when I’m available, but if I’m on battle.net I’d more than likely be up for some relaxed practice matches. I’m not a great player, but I’m decent, hovering around the top of my 1v1 plat division. The more people who love Starcraft II, the merrier. [QUOTE][/QUOTE]

1778

Probably.

9-Pool only works up to a certain skill level, beyond which Zerg really needs to out-macro in order to win matches. The problem with winning off of a novelty build with the way the matchmaking is set up is that you’ll place so high that you’ll have a miserable time transitioning your game away from that build and working on doing early macro/defense instead of early rush.

Back in SC1 and WC3 you could make new accounts and “start over” but that’s pretty much gone now.

The mindset and skills to 9-pool vs a 14-pool/16-hatchery are radically different. I think it’s good to know how to pull off a 9-pool and I think it teaches you micro, but I’d suggest you don’t get sucked into being a one-trick pony and work up other aspects of your game as well.

1779

The problem is, this is a game that is played by a lot of people, and it has a lot of depth. Like chess, simply playing games won’t really help you learn much. You can play 100 chess matches and still suck horribly (from experience =/).

Luckily, the game is new and in a state of flux, so there are many possibilities to be tried and much to be figured out. In SC1 the theory behind playing has been so finely ground down, examined and exhaustively researched that play has become far more standardized, and without studying that body of knowledge its nearly impossible to get past a certain level.

1780

Daniel: I did want to add congrats on getting into the multiplayer. You have to start somewhere, and it’s better to get started doing something you’re comfortable with that’s effective. My advice isn’t meant to belittle or insult, but just a general observation on what your next steps could be if you want to work your skills up.