StarCraft 2

Disp_sl said:

You don't see this as a massive problem for the game? Each time there's a delay, or the game gets stale because of poorly designed units and maps like it has been for the last year and a half, it kills off a chunk of the audience that will never come back. The difference with SC2 is anyone who starts brand new right now is 3 years behind, and the barrier of entry to get good enough at this game to be at grandmasters level equivalent is massive compared to those other games. I just think that 19 out of 20 people who buy HoTS and LoTV will be existing/established players, and the game isn't going to draw in almost any new pro-gamer blood outside of Korea. In the foreigner scene it has nowhere to go but down.

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What will kill the game then is that laddering is antisocial, when I'm laddering, I don't want to talk to anyone. Being behind upon starting is bullcrap, anyone starting now will get handed a perfect guide for every matchup including every viable strat and timing. The biggest problem I can see right now is that econs are symmetrical, 3 saturated bases are basically as good as your econ will get. Units and changes added in HotS seem to promote mobility and break stalemates, so hopefully we won't get another PvZ where we just cycle between popular timings. Maps are also to blame here, the map pool basically hasn't changed for like a year and half, they need to redo ladder maps every 3 months to keep shit fresh.

My point is basically the gamedoesn'thave to turn stale and HotS reinvigorated my hopes in Blizzard, they eventually get shit right and as long as there is no other 1v1 RTS, I will wait.

Zaphid_sl said:

My point is basically the gamedoesn'thave to turn stale and HotS reinvigorated my hopes in Blizzard, they eventually get shit right and as long as there is no other 1v1 RTS, I will wait.

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You're right it doesn't have to, but this is Blizzard we're talking about. They've completely salted their user base for D3 and SC2 by letting massive, game-breaking problems go on for way too long, and not fixing them until people just don't give a shit about the game any more. There will always be people who are willing to give them the time and wait for the finished product, but there are a lot more casual people who aren't. I just don't see the game ever expanding it's audience besides the temporary influx when a new expansion comes out.

Man.. I just did my 5 placement matches and got torn up. Right into silver. Got a lot of catching up to do.. I think I had just hit Diamond when I stopped playing last year.

I watch a lot of Liquid Sheth streams, are there any other Zerg players that are good to watch? I enjoy his stream because he's really friendly and explains what he's doing most of the time.

It's basically why I gave up playing sc2 and play LoL now a day. I still watch sc2; but to be at least somewhat decent at sc2 you have to put in so many hours of it. Plus overall I prefer playing team games more. It's like when we'd all get together and do KoTH's. 80% of the fun for me was sitting as a spectator and talking with everybody about strats and/or talking about the people playing. Sitting around grinding solo 12 hours a day just isn't that fun for me.

Plus, LoL being free and very easy to understand is helpful. Let's not even mention every LoL tournament has free 720+ HD streams available where as most sc2 tournaments require some type of payment to get HD streams.

Also, Riot actually gives a shit about their product. Paying teams salary to participate in their leagues. Constantly giving free HD streams. Doing Hotfixes and buffing/nerfing certain items/champions every ~2 weeks or so. I mean, for fuck sake it took Blizzard what a whole 8 months or so before they even touched infestor/brood lord.

The only downside is the community for LoL is retarded. I played a few games and got yelled at so bad that I said "fuck this, I'm taking my ball and going home."

http://eu.blizzard.com/en-gb/games/hots/landing/

well the story is already fucked up....i just hope they don't fuck it up even more.i think i don't ask much imo

Noodleface_sl said:

The only downside is the community for LoL is retarded. I played a few games and got yelled at so bad that I said "fuck this, I'm taking my ball and going home."

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What gaming community is not retarded? It's ridiculous, on the public forum for a game you can't say anything, in fact as we've seen in the Sim City thread even non-violent criticism will get you banned. Blizzard runs a pretty simliar approach, anyone who criticizes the game will get shut down by their fantrolls and if they lose their cool themselves, banned.

But in the game? All gloves come off, racial slurs, empty threats of rape and violence, anything that would be good enough for criminal charges if shouted in public is just fine and dandy there.

Quineloe_sl said:

What gaming community is not retarded? It's ridiculous, on the public forum for a game you can't say anything, in fact as we've seen in the Sim City thread even non-violent criticism will get you banned. Blizzard runs a pretty simliar approach, anyone who criticizes the game will get shut down by their fantrolls and if they lose their cool themselves, banned.

But in the game? All gloves come off, racial slurs, empty threats of rape and violence, anything that would be good enough for criminal charges if shouted in public is just fine and dandy there.

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First rule of gaming communities: If you are enjoying the game, don't come anywhere near the forums.

Quineloe_sl said:

What gaming community is not retarded? It's ridiculous, on the public forum for a game you can't say anything, in fact as we've seen in the Sim City thread even non-violent criticism will get you banned. Blizzard runs a pretty simliar approach, anyone who criticizes the game will get shut down by their fantrolls and if they lose their cool themselves, banned.

But in the game? All gloves come off, racial slurs, empty threats of rape and violence, anything that would be good enough for criminal charges if shouted in public is just fine and dandy there.

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I have pretty thick skin. I remember in CS being that guy constantly being yelled at the whole time they played until I got better. In SC/SC2 I wasn't much better, but I felt the community was a bit more well-mannered. I played a few games of LoL and the entire time I had people calling me a faggot, go kill myself, alll this shit. It doesn't bother me on a personal level, it just makes me not enjoy the game. The community (public) for LoL is one of the worst I've ever seen.. granted, it's a free game so every 13 year old has access to it. Fuck, I'd rather play xbox live call of duty black ops 2 than LoL.

Sidian_sl said:

It's basically why I gave up playing sc2 and play LoL now a day. I still watch sc2; but to be at least somewhat decent at sc2 you have to put in so many hours of it. Plus overall I prefer playing team games more. It's like when we'd all get together and do KoTH's. 80% of the fun for me was sitting as a spectator and talking with everybody about strats and/or talking about the people playing. Sitting around grinding solo 12 hours a day just isn't that fun for me.

Plus, LoL being free and very easy to understand is helpful. Let's not even mention every LoL tournament has free 720+ HD streams available where as most sc2 tournaments require some type of payment to get HD streams.

Also, Riot actually gives a shit about their product. Paying teams salary to participate in their leagues. Constantly giving free HD streams. Doing Hotfixes and buffing/nerfing certain items/champions every ~2 weeks or so. I mean, for fuck sake it took Blizzard what a whole 8 months or so before they even touched infestor/brood lord.

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Depends on what you mean as good or competitive. I don't really play SC2 all that much but I'm still high Diamond in WoL. Sure without putting tons of time into the game I won't get to high master / GM but I'm OK with that.

Patch Zergs are getting hella exposed at IEM. Looking at you Snute and Vortix.

The thing with SC2 is that most people have some natural skill that you need to get to by not making stupid mistakes and general game knowledge, however raising that takes much more work, because you need more refined builds and better mechanics, but the ladder is horrible place for refining builds and when you first get up your APM, you need some time to get used to that, as weird as it sounds.

Hm I disagree I think ladder is the perfect place to refine a build since you are always going in blind. One of the big issues that I dealt with for the longest time is I went in with a build and I was refusing to adapt. I wouldn't actively scout to make build modifications because I knew I wouldn't modify the build anyways. It really was keeping me down. Anymore I'm aggressive in my contention for watch towers and I like to have an SCV moving around looking for things to let me know what is going on. Mostly just seeing if an army is bearing down on my base or not.

I actually take an odd sense of pride in winning games where I simply out scouted my opponent. The other day I beat a fast 2base bane bust even while going 3cc Hellion simply because I poked around with my SCV and saw a ton of lings so I just retreated my natural and put bunkers in my main. Kept most the SCV alive, kept all 3 CC alive and the Zerg was pretty far behind.

My TvT build loses outright to 111 Siege if I don't scout it. So I was poking around with an SCV and saw my opponent moving out with a handful of marines and 2 tanks. Pretty transparent what was going on. So I just took my marines to meet his army out in an open battlefield -- really the only way I can defeat the build with mine. I have like double his marines at that point and stim should finish up soon. Usually I can just kill all his marines leaving nothing but 3 tanks which can't do much on their own. Won that game too.

Which reminds me I've altered my TvZ build to be ultra, ultra greedy. Basically I do a 1 rax FE (CC before 2nd SD), 2 gas, Factory/Reactor, CC, 2 Ebay, +1/+1, port, add rax

I play mostly team games with friends. They seem to have deliberately designed team games to not be competitive. So if you dont have much time to play then that may be something to look into.

Why do any of us need to be grandmaster? You do not have to try to compete with people who play hundreds of games per month.

I know everyone here will disagree with me: but I think a lot of the above problems would be solved by random map scripts. First 5 minutes of a game boring to watch? RMS means that you can spend the first 5 looking at the map layout and discussing how the game may unfold. Strategy stale? RMS makes you have to adapt your strategy every game.

I disagree heavily with randomly generated maps. If that happened you'd never see awesome map unique strategies. If you watch the Proleague you can tell they are custom tailoring their play to the map and it is cool to see. The simple solution is simply to rotate maps more often and get rid of the concept where maps are required to gift 3 bases.

I think most people on this board have a mindset as gamers where they want to be and need to be the best. We wouldn't have all migrated from an MMO forum specifically dedicated to high end EQ if we didn't have that competitive nature. I hate losing way more than I enjoy winning. Which leads to massive ladder anxiety and it also frustrates me when I know what I need to do but I physically can't perform it. Statistically speaking being in upper Diamond means I'm a pretty decent player but that isn't good enough for me. So I think most people just throw their hands up and say "fuck it I won't play at all" if they can't play at the tip top level. Which is upper Master.

You think that high master is tip top level ? Maybe on KR, and even then the way SC2 works you have people at the very top who can just shit on everyone below them all day long. Starcraft is a bit of a relic of the past in that it doesn't obfuscate what is going on in a game and lets you show off that you have the skill and winning one game has no bearing on the next one, beyond what goes on in your and your opponent's head. No killstreaks, no random spray n pray, no pvp gear. Which is why I fucking love it, I have written it several times, but no other game gave me so many highs after winning. Of course sometimes that is hard to appreciate when you know the only reason you won is because the other guy had to be pants-on-head retarded.

With Global play properly in and some weekend games, I could see myself sticking with the game for quite some time. Random laddering when you can only play 2-3 nights a week would be bad, but for some reason I seem to play much better in customs and if we get some kind of KotH going, I'll be trying to make it as often as possible.

Randomly generated maps are horrible for balance, that said, the map pool needs to change every 3-6 months completely. Daybreak and Cloud Kingdom are pretty good maps, but I'm sick and tired of them.

When I said tip top I meant basically the best you can get without having to quit your dayjob and playing 10 hours a day

I got into RTS first, before MMOs. I had the luxury of playing RTS for 80 hours a week around the time that you guys were playing EQ (99-03). Back then I wanted to be the best in the world, and due to my time investment I became reasonably good at two games, I would say top 5 in one of them (people took turns in topping the ladder, none of the best players really cared). There were not many tournaments back then though, so you were lucky to win $100 from an online tourney. The thing I learned was that I would never be the best, no matter how I tried. Now I no longer have that mindset where I need to be the best because even if conditions were perfect for me to practice I would still not get to the very top. And that was back when the games were slower, the chances of me getting anywhere near grandmaster is SC2 (which is fast as hell) is zero, let alone anywhere near the pro players.

IDK if you have really, really solid RTS fundamentals and I mean not just "probes, pylons, hotkeys" I mean knowing exactly how to scout, when to scout, knowing timings, knowing proper expanding, knowing when you're ahead and defend, knowing when you're behind and attack, having killer instinct, having star sense you could be relatively certain you could be high masters and get matched against pros and possibly take a game here and there. By pros I'm talking about the NA pros. You'll probably still get your ass handed to you by true professionals in Korea. The big problem is a bunch of people (myself very much included) have an inflated sense of their RTS knowledge when really the surface is only scratched. Luckily I've started reviewing my replays a bunch recently and that has really helped me find and fix flaws. Prior to that I was convinced I just lost because my opponent did some gimmicky build that countered my build so I'll just try doing the same thing again. Instead if I lose to some weird build I need to realize why I didn't know about it coming and why I didn't deflect it properly.

Another problem is that even though Starcraft is "the" genre defining game very few games does what it does. There aren't too many RTS which are fast paced and economically focused like Starcraft. So being good at C&C or Warcraft doesn't mean the same skills will transfer over to Starcraft. To be successful in Starcraft you have to almost intentionally stop paying attention to a battle because saving 8 marines is no where near as important as delaying your engi bay, getting supply blocked, making a CC or doing any of the other various infrastructure tasks. However mostly every other RTS heavily rewards you babysitting an army.

SC2 is the first RTS I ever played competitively, though I had an idea what I'm getting into because I watched a lot of pro broodwar. Maybe that is the reason I had no problem getting decent, though only when I got there I understood how silly I was when I thought I "get" the game. You need to be diamond+ to understand how bad you actually are. Basically anything there is to know, you should know, because it will let you win more games. Do 3 VRs and 4 Carriers beat 15 Hydras with what upgrades and micro ? Somebody out thereknowsand when that moment comes, he will look like a genius.

RTS fundamentals is pretty weird term, since it applies literally only to APM and maybe the speed at which you adapt to new games/ideas. Nobody ever talks about decision making behind where your APM is best put to use, how to set up your macro cycles and so on, which is paramount because if my warpgate cycle finishes in the middle of a battle, either I fuck up my macro or mismicro the battle, so I either need to overmake warpgates or use composition that doesn't require so much micro. You can even go next level and calculate where your opponent should be looking right now, like poking his third to make him look there while you start cutting down workers with DTs in his main, so it takes longer for him to pull them and so on...

Which is why I think SC2 will survive no matter what, the game is blank canvas which you can draw on with your mouse and keyboard. Most people draw a penis, some people are like a fucking Picasso.

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