I finally finished the Terran Campaign and before moving into the Zerg one I wanted to play a few matches. Any suggestions on how to get used to playing again as a newb? I played a quick match vs Very Easy AI and was really amazed how different the tech tree is between Campaign and Match play. I understand for balancing and what not, but where are my lovely Medics!!!!
have you played multiplayer before?
in SC not in SC2, so about 10 years ago.
best suggestion I have is to focus on always making workers steadily - always. Never let your comand centre sit idle. And alwys build depots before you need them, not when you need them.
Hehe watching Spanishiwa stream, because old times y'know? It's fun to see behaviour in the upper leagues being just the same as the ones you're in.
Spanishiwa is being aggressive using only lings from an early three-base position, against his opponent's two-hatch:
"all in nub. you suck so much"
I finally finished the Terran Campaign and before moving into the Zerg one I wanted to play a few matches. Any suggestions on how to get used to playing again as a newb? I played a quick match vs Very Easy AI and was really amazed how different the tech tree is between Campaign and Match play. I understand for balancing and what not, but where are my lovely Medics!!!!
have you played multiplayer before?
in SC not in SC2, so about 10 years ago.
best suggestion I have is to focus on always making workers steadily - always. Never let your comand centre sit idle. And alwys build depots before you need them, not when you need them.
I'll work on that, I do tend to build a ton of workers early and forget to keep up with them. I do, however, try to build my depots ahead of time. Thanks for the advice. I will just beat on various difficulty of AI for a bit then just jump in and get beat and learn from it.
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
edited September 2014
we can play some 2v2 vs some AI in a little while if you want!
Wait if I remember correctly hots makes you play zerg rather than terran, right?
If so, it's more than just making "supply depots" and "workers."
Zerg playstyle is very different than "just make mans."
Granted, the single player gives you a lot of handicaps (no queen injects needed), but the economics are a little different. Especially with how friggin' long spine crawlers take to make.
Mainly, the biggest change is that you will really only have one main structure to hotkey, which is the hatchery, to make every single unit. That's prob. the biggest change.
I was so confused when I started the HOTS campaign and I just had ALL THESE LARVA. Queens were turned into medics and were fast as well. I should probably have read the tooltips on stuff.
Remember when sc2ranks.com was like super cool to read?
You'd be able to get an idea of who was doing good at any moment, and there'd be like secret koreans that we'd all have to guess. Certain players would over achieve on ladder and you'd think that meant holy shit, they could win the GSL! It was like this great pulse of the community which posed all these interesting questions about who was good, who was bad, what was going to happen next.
Tell me your sc2ranks stories from ages gone by.
--
Also what the the heck is up with WinterStarcraft. Is he just someone connecting to an audience of players who lost all their meaningful streamers? Is he building a fanbase from younger players who are getting in the game now? Or is he really viewbotting as people say again and again? His stream chat is surprisingly inactive for someone who is hosting 3k viewers.
But realistically if he is viewbotting, holy shit Starcraft 2 is not watched much on a non-tournament basis.
I donno, but the only thing I actually find weird is he says in his stream details that he has played 25k games. 25k! I looked it up and Kas, who everyone remembers for playing a billion games a day since the beta, only claims 20k. Weird?
---
Also Starcraft 2 is starting to feel like BroodWar. Not particularly with regards to play, but the way the community is slowly rebuilding in a diverse and interesting way. The gold rush is over. I mean everyone says dead game, but Brood War was so niche and esoteric feeling in many regards, and that really drove the fun. Sure it always had its pedigree, and big initial success but people asking you to play BroodWar in 2002-2005 when the game really cemented its community was like being offered an old vinyl print, of a once hugely successful band. Like Zeppelin albums in the 80s. Really think that is impotant.
The younger players coming up now as well, have a real chance to be like Korean good I think. They just have so much to learn from. And I never really bought in that its 20 hours of practicing in destitute alone that does it. That means potentially by like 20XX this shit will really work out. Which is cool, but damn do I want it now.
@Banzai5150 and @Dhalphir, I'll probably have a lot more free time starting next week-ish, so I'll join in with 2v2s or 3v3s or 1v1 practice or whatnot!
that's a really cool post. I definitely know what you mean about the different feel around the game. Those who were just bandwagoning on teh esports are most likely watching DotA now - hell, I'm mostly one of those people too! I haven't watched SC2 since Redbull the other weekend.
I watch Winter's stream. I don't think he's viewbotting.
Here's what I think happened with Winter:
He watched pro streams. He noticed something. That something was that they were not entertaining (by and large). They were not inclusive. There was literally zero content for people who don't understand Starcraft 2 at a high level.
He took that information, and capitalized on it. He set out to make an entertaining stream. He always commentates (health permitting). His commentary is very good for new players and rusty players (like me, heh). It's not just what he's doing, but why he's doing it. What his thought process is. That's always something that's great to see a streamer do.
His other big key thing is that he tries HARD to be inclusive to new players, or people who have never played Starcraft. When he's featured on Twitch, he always starts up a new Bronze to Masters stream that's directly aimed at getting more people into the scene (and of course, into his stream). He's chasing new people rather than trying to capitalize on the existing viewer base.
If you go to his youtube, you'll see he has put some real effort into explaining the game for new people and trying to get people into it.
Now, all that said, people hate on him because he's not a top tier player. He's basically a Masters level zerg. (He plays random because he wants everyone to get something out of the stream no matter their preferred race.) So when they see him pulling thousands of viewers and making very good money on donations, they get jealous.
What they should do is get smart. Stop just playing and putting up a webcam and then never interacting with your audience.
Anyway, that's my minor thesis on why what Winter is doing is working.
Jim must win the loser's match on wcs us coming on after check-huk right now. He must.
Edit: Ah, good poast Derrick! I couldn't for the life of me understand how some kid playing random was sitting on viewer numbers on par with Stephano in his prime.
Panda4You on
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VariableMouth CongressStroke Me Lady FameRegistered Userregular
I've never tuned into winterstarcraft but that sounds like a good way to get some viewers. (the appealing to everyone part)
but usually if there's a rumor that something strange is going on it's accurate
oh hey QXC casting wcs am. that's great, he's been fantastic at every event I've seen him cast at. and in fact I've watched IEM toronto a LOT to learn some shit and he is really quite good. he and apollo are a kick ass team. but then again I do love apollo always.
I think Winter's stream is good, don't get me wrong. Well its okay. But when someone has so many more viewers than everyone else, its odd you don't have all kinds of trending posts about what happened on his stream that day, he did this, he did that, etc. Its like he is invisible other than this big old stream fanbase.
Which isn't impossible, in fact its something I think is pretty weird about some of the Starcraft fanbases. I mean Husky still gets like 100k views on his youtube Starcraft videos. Is there really still people watching a husky starcraft VOD video every day?
Pretty crazy, I moved past youtube VODs actually really really early in Starcraft, because live games just feel so much better. So you have to imagine, sometimes there's like little fanbases which aren't connected to the traditional channels. You expect everyone to go to X Y and Z in the age of the internet but surely they don't have to.
Its kind of like how theres allegedly millions of middle age lady game players who never ever, even bother to check on the internet if there's something about video games there. They just go to the app store or facebook and play shit there.
But getting back to Winter, I totally agree that most Starcraft streamers kind of shot themselves in the foot and became boring. Streaming is just so grueling of a practice, with any game, I think over time people lose their creativity with it. See its like radio broadcasting, if you don't have anything planned and are just going to do 12 hours of slog each day, it gets boring.
But when say, Destiny's stream was really good early on it always had this (perhaps accidental) structure to it, okay he's trying to make this result and get this league, then hes going to play this tournament, now he will test these builds, now he will talk shit to this person on skype, and wow hey a special guest just dropped into the stream! Now he will try to ladder 2v2 with this random friend who dropped in. That shit sounds a lot more like conventional programming you see, on TV/Radio, talk shows, etc.
That's why SingSing's stream is so good in DotA, but over time I think they forget this.
Those type of narratives are what make anything fun to watch, and the reason I mention it is thats a big reason why I think people get sick of Starcraft. It has a LIMITED number of stories for a player to pursue around the game ... like okay you made diamond league, now what?
Which is kind of a long term failure, because leagues and seasons and all that were supposed to give people a regular reason to play, and think about the game. I'm pretty sure they were looking at ICCUP when they developed the idea, and its just not nearly the same.
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
I have always thought it odd that no real online communities besides the existing one of TeamLiquid + /r/starcraft seemed to spring up around SC2.
You have the same thing with Dota2. You have /r/dota2, and you have LiquidDota. What else is there?
But honestly I think reddit is like the Walmart of internet communities, it uses efficiency, and the fact that its a one stop sub culture shop to basically gobble up everything. Forget your mom and pop video game hangouts.
It also did not help that the first year(?) of Starcraft had no damn chat channels, so good luck meeting some friends, forming a clan, or having communities spring up. Everyone just got in the habit of not doing that.
Remember many moons ago, Team Liquid likely started on Starcraft BroodWar battle.net, because it had a chat room basis. That's why I am glad for team liquid in many cases, despite it having some very weird weirdos. I feel bad for all the Starcraft BW personalities people are aware of, who made it their home and had the place get flooded out during SC2 launch.
But essentially now, places like streams, youtuber comments, etc become more community stand ins. Which to me is completely fucking weird because its very hard to have a good time talking over anything like that.
I mean I appreciate how light weight reddit is, but until you try to use it as a platform to get any exposure you can't realize how fucked up and random it can be. Remember ChanMan getting banned for upvoting his own shit? Yea, you practically have to do that because of the way the algorithm charts things, I definitely did the exact same thing to publicize the charity events from here long ago, and uhhh its not it was some master plan, its just that otherwise you can't even get stuff you submit to appear ON the website.
Forums are nice, remember those?
Somehow I turned that in an argument about how battle.net could have been cooler. oops
Man why can't this guy be the best at Starcraft. Such a long term love and commitment for it.
...
Honestly WCS America region locking is going to be really good.
Sure foreigners stink, but oh my gosh it is so sad to reconnect to the playerbase of this game and find out everyone good is an introverted teenager who speaks a language I do not know.
Events in the past like that did a soft region lock sort of thing like NASL, or the GSL World Championship were so good. Remember the fucking GSL World Championships? Specifically the team round in the 2011 event where the talent looked balanced. Check this shit out in retrospect. (Spoilers at this link, watch it, if you are a HotS baby!)
Portly persian-canadien toss TT1 from Montreal knocking heads with BW legend Nada? Ukranian beast man Dimaga coming up in the clutch vs GSL champs? 15 games deep in a marathon pro league format all-ego match???? Holy shit that was fun. What a dream, that adults from every corner of the world could come into this thing with different styles, different stories, personalities, could make their shot at this thing.
...
I don't know how you ever resolve the fact that in competitive video games the best players are probably going to have the worst personalities. At least in basketball people have incredible physical gifts which get them to the top level, meaning there is a ton of diversity, weirdos, and entertainers.
Yeah, lots of Starcraft streamers are just boring, to be honest.
I like the plan aspect of SC2. Like 'if I do X, then he has to do Y or die and then I'm ahead'. Or 'if I do this I get ahead economically and if he tries to punish I do this and then stay ahead.'
Streamers usually doesn't frame it that way. Competitions do, but you have to guess what they're doing and usually it only half works and then its a scramble kinda
good production. video games really are in the mainstream
You could be anywhere
On the black screen
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SmasherStarting to get dizzyRegistered Userregular
TIME WARP MAKER
Between casting and audio/video issues this isn't exactly top notch.
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VariableMouth CongressStroke Me Lady FameRegistered Userregular
the two of them aren't bad, I'm gonna make the excuse of their rhythm being thrown off by whatever the heck is going on there with the video/audio issues
the two of them aren't bad, I'm gonna make the excuse of their rhythm being thrown off by whatever the heck is going on there with the video/audio issues
Generally speaking yeah, but time warp maker? I've been drinking and haven't played more than a few games of sc2 in months and that still immediately leapt out at me (and the rest of twitch chat).
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VariableMouth CongressStroke Me Lady FameRegistered Userregular
he laughed, it's not like he didn't know he said something silly. he wanted to mention how many timewarps the mothership core had but he got ahead of himself and accidentally said 'the time warp', then laughed and said maker because he realized he was out of order.
not that fucking up isn't a problem but one little mistake doesn't make it a bad cast imo
VariableMouth CongressStroke Me Lady FameRegistered Userregular
@tarranon and everyone, watch at least the first one here. the second one is only in korean, I assume something happened with the stream. but if you can sit through 20 minutes with no commentary it's an amazing game. the first is must watch though.
It's nice to see Demuslim still having pretty good viewer numbers, even though he's not made much noise in tournaments for a long while. I goddamn hate every terran, and everyone ever thought about playing terran, with a passion but Demuslim is a likeable guy and his stream is quite enjoyable! And he's not reluctant to drop comments on his gameplay which is always a plus.
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
Posts
best suggestion I have is to focus on always making workers steadily - always. Never let your comand centre sit idle. And alwys build depots before you need them, not when you need them.
Spanishiwa is being aggressive using only lings from an early three-base position, against his opponent's two-hatch:
"all in nub. you suck so much"
I'll work on that, I do tend to build a ton of workers early and forget to keep up with them. I do, however, try to build my depots ahead of time. Thanks for the advice. I will just beat on various difficulty of AI for a bit then just jump in and get beat and learn from it.
Appreciate the offer, give me a few days to get a bit more comfortable with the Tech tree and do some reading.
If so, it's more than just making "supply depots" and "workers."
Zerg playstyle is very different than "just make mans."
Granted, the single player gives you a lot of handicaps (no queen injects needed), but the economics are a little different. Especially with how friggin' long spine crawlers take to make.
Mainly, the biggest change is that you will really only have one main structure to hotkey, which is the hatchery, to make every single unit. That's prob. the biggest change.
Witty signature comment goes here...
wra
You'd be able to get an idea of who was doing good at any moment, and there'd be like secret koreans that we'd all have to guess. Certain players would over achieve on ladder and you'd think that meant holy shit, they could win the GSL! It was like this great pulse of the community which posed all these interesting questions about who was good, who was bad, what was going to happen next.
Tell me your sc2ranks stories from ages gone by.
--
Also what the the heck is up with WinterStarcraft. Is he just someone connecting to an audience of players who lost all their meaningful streamers? Is he building a fanbase from younger players who are getting in the game now? Or is he really viewbotting as people say again and again? His stream chat is surprisingly inactive for someone who is hosting 3k viewers.
But realistically if he is viewbotting, holy shit Starcraft 2 is not watched much on a non-tournament basis.
I donno, but the only thing I actually find weird is he says in his stream details that he has played 25k games. 25k! I looked it up and Kas, who everyone remembers for playing a billion games a day since the beta, only claims 20k. Weird?
---
Also Starcraft 2 is starting to feel like BroodWar. Not particularly with regards to play, but the way the community is slowly rebuilding in a diverse and interesting way. The gold rush is over. I mean everyone says dead game, but Brood War was so niche and esoteric feeling in many regards, and that really drove the fun. Sure it always had its pedigree, and big initial success but people asking you to play BroodWar in 2002-2005 when the game really cemented its community was like being offered an old vinyl print, of a once hugely successful band. Like Zeppelin albums in the 80s. Really think that is impotant.
The younger players coming up now as well, have a real chance to be like Korean good I think. They just have so much to learn from. And I never really bought in that its 20 hours of practicing in destitute alone that does it. That means potentially by like 20XX this shit will really work out. Which is cool, but damn do I want it now.
Never change
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
3DS Friend Code: 3110-5393-4113
Steam profile
that's a really cool post. I definitely know what you mean about the different feel around the game. Those who were just bandwagoning on teh esports are most likely watching DotA now - hell, I'm mostly one of those people too! I haven't watched SC2 since Redbull the other weekend.
Here's what I think happened with Winter:
He watched pro streams. He noticed something. That something was that they were not entertaining (by and large). They were not inclusive. There was literally zero content for people who don't understand Starcraft 2 at a high level.
He took that information, and capitalized on it. He set out to make an entertaining stream. He always commentates (health permitting). His commentary is very good for new players and rusty players (like me, heh). It's not just what he's doing, but why he's doing it. What his thought process is. That's always something that's great to see a streamer do.
His other big key thing is that he tries HARD to be inclusive to new players, or people who have never played Starcraft. When he's featured on Twitch, he always starts up a new Bronze to Masters stream that's directly aimed at getting more people into the scene (and of course, into his stream). He's chasing new people rather than trying to capitalize on the existing viewer base.
If you go to his youtube, you'll see he has put some real effort into explaining the game for new people and trying to get people into it.
Now, all that said, people hate on him because he's not a top tier player. He's basically a Masters level zerg. (He plays random because he wants everyone to get something out of the stream no matter their preferred race.) So when they see him pulling thousands of viewers and making very good money on donations, they get jealous.
What they should do is get smart. Stop just playing and putting up a webcam and then never interacting with your audience.
Anyway, that's my minor thesis on why what Winter is doing is working.
3DS Friend Code: 3110-5393-4113
Steam profile
Edit: Ah, good poast Derrick! I couldn't for the life of me understand how some kid playing random was sitting on viewer numbers on par with Stephano in his prime.
but usually if there's a rumor that something strange is going on it's accurate
oh hey QXC casting wcs am. that's great, he's been fantastic at every event I've seen him cast at. and in fact I've watched IEM toronto a LOT to learn some shit and he is really quite good. he and apollo are a kick ass team. but then again I do love apollo always.
Which isn't impossible, in fact its something I think is pretty weird about some of the Starcraft fanbases. I mean Husky still gets like 100k views on his youtube Starcraft videos. Is there really still people watching a husky starcraft VOD video every day?
Pretty crazy, I moved past youtube VODs actually really really early in Starcraft, because live games just feel so much better. So you have to imagine, sometimes there's like little fanbases which aren't connected to the traditional channels. You expect everyone to go to X Y and Z in the age of the internet but surely they don't have to.
Its kind of like how theres allegedly millions of middle age lady game players who never ever, even bother to check on the internet if there's something about video games there. They just go to the app store or facebook and play shit there.
But getting back to Winter, I totally agree that most Starcraft streamers kind of shot themselves in the foot and became boring. Streaming is just so grueling of a practice, with any game, I think over time people lose their creativity with it. See its like radio broadcasting, if you don't have anything planned and are just going to do 12 hours of slog each day, it gets boring.
But when say, Destiny's stream was really good early on it always had this (perhaps accidental) structure to it, okay he's trying to make this result and get this league, then hes going to play this tournament, now he will test these builds, now he will talk shit to this person on skype, and wow hey a special guest just dropped into the stream! Now he will try to ladder 2v2 with this random friend who dropped in. That shit sounds a lot more like conventional programming you see, on TV/Radio, talk shows, etc.
That's why SingSing's stream is so good in DotA, but over time I think they forget this.
Those type of narratives are what make anything fun to watch, and the reason I mention it is thats a big reason why I think people get sick of Starcraft. It has a LIMITED number of stories for a player to pursue around the game ... like okay you made diamond league, now what?
Which is kind of a long term failure, because leagues and seasons and all that were supposed to give people a regular reason to play, and think about the game. I'm pretty sure they were looking at ICCUP when they developed the idea, and its just not nearly the same.
You have the same thing with Dota2. You have /r/dota2, and you have LiquidDota. What else is there?
(eg http://www.gosugamers.net/forums/topic/1053778-this-site-is-dead/)
But honestly I think reddit is like the Walmart of internet communities, it uses efficiency, and the fact that its a one stop sub culture shop to basically gobble up everything. Forget your mom and pop video game hangouts.
It also did not help that the first year(?) of Starcraft had no damn chat channels, so good luck meeting some friends, forming a clan, or having communities spring up. Everyone just got in the habit of not doing that.
Remember many moons ago, Team Liquid likely started on Starcraft BroodWar battle.net, because it had a chat room basis. That's why I am glad for team liquid in many cases, despite it having some very weird weirdos. I feel bad for all the Starcraft BW personalities people are aware of, who made it their home and had the place get flooded out during SC2 launch.
But essentially now, places like streams, youtuber comments, etc become more community stand ins. Which to me is completely fucking weird because its very hard to have a good time talking over anything like that.
I mean I appreciate how light weight reddit is, but until you try to use it as a platform to get any exposure you can't realize how fucked up and random it can be. Remember ChanMan getting banned for upvoting his own shit? Yea, you practically have to do that because of the way the algorithm charts things, I definitely did the exact same thing to publicize the charity events from here long ago, and uhhh its not it was some master plan, its just that otherwise you can't even get stuff you submit to appear ON the website.
Forums are nice, remember those?
Somehow I turned that in an argument about how battle.net could have been cooler. oops
Man why can't this guy be the best at Starcraft. Such a long term love and commitment for it.
...
Honestly WCS America region locking is going to be really good.
Sure foreigners stink, but oh my gosh it is so sad to reconnect to the playerbase of this game and find out everyone good is an introverted teenager who speaks a language I do not know.
Events in the past like that did a soft region lock sort of thing like NASL, or the GSL World Championship were so good. Remember the fucking GSL World Championships? Specifically the team round in the 2011 event where the talent looked balanced. Check this shit out in retrospect. (Spoilers at this link, watch it, if you are a HotS baby!)
http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/2011_GSL_World_Championship/TeamLeague
Portly persian-canadien toss TT1 from Montreal knocking heads with BW legend Nada? Ukranian beast man Dimaga coming up in the clutch vs GSL champs? 15 games deep in a marathon pro league format all-ego match???? Holy shit that was fun. What a dream, that adults from every corner of the world could come into this thing with different styles, different stories, personalities, could make their shot at this thing.
...
I don't know how you ever resolve the fact that in competitive video games the best players are probably going to have the worst personalities. At least in basketball people have incredible physical gifts which get them to the top level, meaning there is a ton of diversity, weirdos, and entertainers.
I like the plan aspect of SC2. Like 'if I do X, then he has to do Y or die and then I'm ahead'. Or 'if I do this I get ahead economically and if he tries to punish I do this and then stay ahead.'
Streamers usually doesn't frame it that way. Competitions do, but you have to guess what they're doing and usually it only half works and then its a scramble kinda
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
NADota huehuehue
she is starting!
stream:
awesome write up focusing on blizzcon http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/starcraft-2/466746-kespa-cup-preview-the-road-to-blizzcon
On the black screen
not that fucking up isn't a problem but one little mistake doesn't make it a bad cast imo
On the black screen
Are you all proud of me or what
Witty signature comment goes here...
wra
I was going to ladder on SC2 as a break from practising Dutch.
I'd rather practise Dutch.
Ik wil niet Starcraft spelen!
Because I'm flat out terrible at it. Also, no time. I just enjoy watching the pros play, and watching you guys talk about when you used to play.
Also, telling my buddy about the Amazon league and proxy hatch'ing people, because he now understands enough about SC2 to find that funny.