f13.net

Time to submit your beta application. (https://us.battle.net/login/login.xml?ref=https%3A%2F%2Fus.battle.net%2Faccount%2Fmanagement%2Findex.xml&app=bam)

How do I sign up?

(http://i41.tinypic.com/111njlz.jpg)

Thanks!

Happy to help.  :awesome_for_real:

Boo! I have my DxDiag from my home computer on my work computer so I can app to betas from work, but now I have to run their dumb program.

DUMB

The up side of going through blizzards process is that once you register all of your blizzard games it remembers all of your cd keys and you then have the option of downloading the game in case the media is misplaced or screwed up.

I can't upload using Blizz's System Checker as hitting send just gives an error message. I've probably firewalled the port they're trying to use, but I can't find any info on which ports to unblock.  Woo hah.

I fail to see the reason to do it this way instead of the traditional "send us your DXDiag."   It's not like they couldn't do that along with their whole 'you must have a cd key registered' to prevent spamming for betas.

I'm guessing the beta thing is just bait to get you to buy into to their new account management system.

edit: and people fudge their dxdiags

I got an error telling me to check my internet connection the first few times I tried to send the data.  Tried again a few minutes later and it worked, so maybe it's just that too many people were trying to send it in at once.

In retrospect I am thinking i should have signed up each of my games to their own acct to up my lottery chances.

Same, i had to try a few times before it got accepted. Took me longer to track down a Blizzard game with a code on it.

Yuk. I don't want my email address to be my login!

(http://www.apostolist.com/storage/wine-and-cheese.jpg)

Wow their system checker sends your MAC address to Blizzard.

Kind of offtopic, but if I already have a WoW account can I turn that into one of these wierd Battle.net accounts so that I can sign up for the SC2 beta? Or should I just create a new account?

You have to (I think) create a new battle.net account, then merge your WOW account into it.  But the way I understand it you then have to log into wow with your email address.

What Koyasha said. 

I finally got it to work, but had to download a new copy of the profiler to do so.  Apparently the one I had was corrupted.  :awesome_for_real:

I like how you have to download and run their system checker, but then it doesn't even recognize SLI.   :uhrr:

I wonder if it fails to recognize Crossfire too?

I suppose it is either very anemic in what it gathers, or it simply doesn't show you everything it gathers.  It showed that my disk space was ~75GB, which only counts my boot disk/partition.

This is a multiplayer beta, right?  Pass.  I've come to the conclusion that multiplayer is great in theory, shitty in practice.

I prefer my gaming to be a solitary exercise, unless it's a casual, play on the couch with friends game.

You do know what starcraft is, right?

(http://homepage.mac.com/cheethorne/Starcraft/images/siegetank.jpg)

"YOU PUSILLANIMOUS MAGGOTS! GET ON THE BATTLEFIELD!"

Yep, I'm just assuming that the beta is to balance out multiplayer, and that you're not getting the single player component of the game.  Am I right in this?

If that's the case then I wouldn't even want to touch it until the actual game hits retail since I'm only interested in the single player game.  I"ve just recently come to the conclusion that I need to be more careful about what games I buy.  Even admittedly great games like TF2 or L4D don't get played by me because I don't really want to deal with other people.  Shit, I don't even like associating with people in games like WoW.

It's very anemic.  They specifically state in the FAQ that it won't detect multiple drives or partitions.

That's pretty dissapointing, since the difference between having 1 video card and two of the same card in SLI or crossfire is fairly significant.  Not to mention from what I coud tell it didn't even check the GPU speed or amount of ram on your video card, just grabbed the basic model name.

This is blizzard.  It should run smoothly on a toaster.

Edit: If anything they probably want to test it on lower end systems to further refine said toaster performance.

The rest of my system is not a toaster though, I figure I'd have a better shot at getting in as a higher end system with a less common SLI setup.  Instead their System Check tool makes it look like my system is some sort of weird Frankenstein abomination with an older video card holding it back.  :oh_i_see:

You probably have a better chance at getting to test this game having a 5 year old POS than a Super-Computer.

That'll probably up your chances though...  :grin:

Blah. Draegan.  :oh_i_see:

Don't you have an automatic entry from your Blizzcon card anyway?

I suppose I should not get hopeful considering my Windows version is from "teh future". :oh_i_see:

This won't be news to anyone but it might as well be somewhere. From the Activision earnings call:

(http://www.mike-myers.net/dieter5.jpg)

Sweet.

If I get in, all of my male students will be forced to worship me.

I've watched a couple of videos where two "e-sport" players are testing maps, and I have to say, the sheer amount of micro that's going on in the video really kills a lot of my desire to play this against other people.

I'm with Big Gulp.  Bring on the single player.  I'll be damned if I want to micro my troops while running away from an explody bug, by running one at a time back into the explody bugs, all while managing an economy, scouting, watching builds, etc.  It looks entirely too much like work.

That's awesome, where do you work?

Tricia Helfer (BSG's  '6' Cylon) is the voice of Kerrigan.   Voice Director is the woman who was the VD for most of the WB cartoons: Animaniacs, Batman TAS, Justice League, Green Lantern movies, etc.

Andrea Romano.  She's like the voice director for everything.  It's spooky.

That's the one!

Also, 1k people from Blizzcon or the Online/DTV stream will get randomly selected for beta slots in sc2.  Nice.

Lame. There goes "everyone" getting a beta key (isn't that what it said when you signed up?)

It appears that beta has begun.  From what I've heard (may not be accurate, can't be certain) you do NOT receive an e-mail if you got in, but need to sign into your account at battle.net to see.  So, ya'll might want to check it out.

No beta for me :(

Just saying now that if anyone has access and is not going to be playing, i will charitably relieve you of the duress of holding said account and will gladly play the game for you.

(no, didn't get betaed either T_T)

No beta here yet either.

It looks like from the buzz around town that big muckity mucks around the SC community got invites, and some high profile reporters/fansite folks got invites.  The masses are still waiting.

Yeah, I have yet to receive my e-mail, or see it in my B.net account.

Downloading the client now.  :heart:

Can you confirm for us whether you got an e-mail or had to check your battle.net account?

I didn't get any email about it, but SC2 showed up on the 'manage my games' page right at the front, clicking on it got me to a download link.

I got an email about it a few minutes ago, but I hadn't checked my account before then.

:( :(

There appears to be  :nda: as well. I think. Need to re-read the thing I clicked past too fast.

Considering sites are doing livestreams, among other shit, I think this is the most universally ignored NDA of all time.

That said, break it somewhere else, I'd rather find shit out firsthand anyway.

Aaaaaand they lifted it already.

http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=23280178109&sid=5000

God I love Blizzard.

That's so Raven.

Well, tell us your impression then.

I love that blizzard actually has the confidence in their games to go "you know what? tell everyone what you think"

Blizzard Beta means something totally different from every other developer's definition of beta also.

A finished game?

or at least a close approximation to one.

...Or it was more the fact that everyone was leaking regardless of any agreement quickly glanced over by eager players.

They drop their NDAs early pretty often. It's pretty much Friends and Family = don't talk about it, anything past that = go nuts. This compared to the new habit of dropping review embargoes the day before a game hits stores. There's a displayed confidence that people playing this will enjoy it, and convince others to play it. Not "shit, don't let anyone know what they're thinking about buying beyond marketing's box design!"

Initial vague impressions:

It's going to kick ass.  :awesome_for_real:

There's only multiplayer available currently. I only got in one 2v2 game in the practice league so far, but the game is clearly very polished already. I played protoss - on the map I played at least the starting mineral deposits are really pretty thin so you need to expand fast. The new protoss gunship things are pretty brutal.

The matchmaking interface, etc., is pretty damn cool. There are achievements, but they're disabled right now. There's a ton of stats and replays and such available from the lobby too.

Real ID does tell people your real name so don't sign up with anyone you don't want to know that.

How different is it from SC2?

Or just same game with spiffier graphics?

The core gameplay is exactly the same as SC1. Gather resources, build buildings and units, kill other guy.

If Blizzard can make the future WoW and Diablo 3 battle.net interfaces as smooth and slick as the one in SC2 currently, then they will have officially 'won' video games.

All battle.net games are going to be linked just like steam.  They've already posted in-game screenshots from a wow friends list showing your online friends be they in SC2, on your server or even on other servers. I will assume the interface used between the three will be the same, albeit diff graphics.

yes


wonder if I can take a leave of absence from work

So I entered my beta key as soon as I found out the beta was out. Still haven't gotten a notice yet though.
Its incredibly frustrating.

Just finished my first game, was dicking around against the computer (it defaults to very easy atm, which is *very* easy) and it's a little overwhelming at first, almost every unit has at least 1 special power, if not 2 or 3. But they are all awesome, be it voice acting or visuals or how they actually play.

If you even remotely enjoyed the original Starcraft, just clear your calendar at this point.


Though one thing I am having trouble adjusting too, is just how far my units can actually see. I was playing Dawn of War for the past couple of months, and in DoW, half your units can see past your screen real estate. The SC2 units are much shorter range and it will probably take some adjusting on my part.

Beta Gameplay video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9JK8lnzw6U&feature=player_embedded)

Is it just me or do all the buildings in those videos look like plastic toys?

A bit, I like the look overall though.

A StarCraft 2 noob's best friend: destructible rocks (http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/02/a-starcraft-2-noobs-best-friend-destructible-rocks.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss)


Interesting…

(http://static.arstechnica.com/assets/2010/02/sc2rocks-thumb-640x400-12204.jpg)

That isn't really a new things. A lot of maps in SC1 multiplayer use temples to do the same thing.

I just want to say again, how slick the Bnet friend/chat integration into SC2 actually is. It's completely seamless. You don't bring up a seperate 'chat layer' or interface during a game, it's just part of the game UI, you use it the same way you build zerglings or whatever.

Anyone else have a beta key from Blizzcon and not received a beta invite yet? Its torture reading these forums and not being able to play because it hasn't shown up on my bnet account yet.

Check any other email addresses you might have used to sign up - I actually was emailed a code to one email address, but also given the beta just straight up no code needed on my battle.net account (which uses a different address.)

It was Fordel's lucky day.  :awesome_for_real:

Would it be wrong of me to email blizzard and ask them where my beta DL is? Or is that a little too psycho?

 :Love_Letters:

One of the nice things already taken from the SC2 beta into WoW (in 3.3.3) is that if you're set to "Remember Account Name" and have an Authenticator you'll be able to enter your username, password, and code on the same screen.

Hey! Lets swap character names so we can be terrible together!

I'm in as Non.nonentity

Fordel.sturmvogel

ingmar.slap

Caladein.cal

What's with the . in the name?

The name after the period is your true unique identifier - The name before the period can be anything, even if it's already taken. When in a game, your name just shows up as whatever is before the period.

I can make additional 'characters' for the purposes of achievements and ladders and so on, but you retain the unique identifier.

I wish you could capitalize the second word.


I also think they need to do a better job of explaining what the second word is when you make the account. I've seen buckets of gibberish from folks not knowing any better.

Vision.Vison

Yeah, not digging the same two names in retrospect.

 :tinfoil:

>.> <.<

My powers tell me Trippy clicked edit instead of quote, and then decided not to respond at all.

Nope.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grmLTtPoakA

You can use the cracked version of SC2 beta to watch replay.

:smug:

This made my day. Thanks for the official theme song.

Quinton.zzz

I expect I will be awful.

EDIT: whenever I try to create or join a game it says "No servers available"....

Servers are down atm

Blurgh, if any of you come across invites, I froth the froth of ages. Could use two though (one for a friend at work). Nothing wrong with being impatient.

Fin.

Do they have a manual or techtree diagram posted somewhere?

I mean, yeah, it's starcraft and it's coming back to me, but would love to know about all the keyboard shortcuts and random whatever if it's documented somewhere.

There's a tech tree in the game, it's basically the only thing that comes up when you hit Help.   Keyboard shortcuts, dunno, I was hoping for an options->keybinds menu but haven't found one yet.

OH COME ON. Don't tell me you got one!

I've mostly just been playing the terrible computer as I try to figure out which buildings build what now.



The little Flamethrower trucks, anyone find a use for these stupid things?

With the +10 dmg vs. light thing they're a possible counter to hydralisk swarms, which seem to be popular right now. I haven't messed with terrans much though.

Rushing is the "must have" start it seems. Either rush or get rushed.

Those noob maps with the big rocks that block your base off really shut early rushes down though.

Once you get past the novice games and get placed in a bracket, most of the rocks disappear i think.

Watched a couple of  live streamed games. I'm not sure I'm still interested.  Been there, done that.

What I saw of the single-player experience at BlizzCon was awesome , by the way, I wouldn't write off the game solely on the multiplayer (which is still fun even if it isn't really terribly different than SC1.)

BTW, I'm droolin in the backround over here, if anyone HAPPENS to have an extra key they're not using, I would totally love to hop in there and play with you guys.

Hell, if it was just SC1 reworked to use a modern gpu and display at modern resolutions instead of 800x600, that'd make me happy.

Me get no beta yet.

I never even played SC1 and I haven't played a RTS since WC3 (tried AoE III but just did not like a lot of the changes in the series).

So far I've gotten into the beta 3 times  :uhrr:, the 2 extra keys were already clamored for by friends but if I get another one for some reason I'll pass it to Schild so we can do some kind of contest or giveaway or something.

If I get any keys, I'll start a thread. So, sure you can mail keys. You can also bribe for them once they show up with donations.

I wish I was in the beta, even if it means I'd be losing almost all the time. Still, SC2 is interesting me, from what I've seen via live streams and replays and the like, far more than the original did. My experience with the original was largely single player after I spent a couple weeks getting beaten by people who could've won solo against myself and a few others at my skill level. The way the Leagues and such work, however... I foresee a lot more player retention on the lower skill end of things than in the original. The battle.net revamp just looks/seems.. fantastic.

The two-name shit is annoying, though. So is the prevalence of rushing. God I hated rushing something fierce. I think I'll love the newb maps.

Yeah. I'm not in.  I do check b.net every few days. Hate!

Who the hell did you take out for drinks at blizzcon D:

So does the beta feel pretty finished?  Release this year?  I'm not one to care about getting into betas or pre-ordering games most of the time but SC2 will certainly be an exception for me.

There's just a lot of balancing left to do with the various units and etc.

There's plenty of balancing to do, as Fordel says, but if we see any delay in release it is going to be down to the single player stuff rather than multiplayer I think, the single player stuff was quite elaborate and who knows where they are on it. Multiplayer seems pretty much done from a systems point of view.

Some strats in 2v2 come off as unbeatable unless matched with the same thing. Me and a partner won 7 games in a row just Zerg/Mutalisk rushing, and I'm absolutely horrible at SC2. But then again we are playing in the lowest bracket, so who knows.

Rushing has always been overpowered in SC team maps. A player can usually fend off a rush from another player by walling in or putting up early static defenses, but in 2v2 or more, if you and your parter defend like that, one guy can get easily overrun, and the other guy won't have forces or time to arrive and help out. One interesting thing I noticed in a commentary is special 2v2 maps where both teammates start in one area, sharing a single chokepoint. Maybe bliz added those maps to address this.

Haha yea. Well, for all my griping i do realise that we will all get into at least the open beta stage at some point, but i just find it curious that people can get multiple invites on an apparently arbitrary basis.

(insert hypocritical grumbling about stupid wow players)

2 of my invites I know what they're from (one because they just put me in all their betas now, one from a Blizzcon code from 2 years ago), the mysterious one is the one they sent me from SC2BetaGB (Great Britain) that included instructions to set up a battle.net account at EU.battle.net. I have *no idea* why I got that one.

~sigh~

Still no luck here. Not with American account, not with Korean account.

Seriously, y'all got no idea how much boy-pussy I could score with the line "Wanna go back to my place? I'm beta testing Starcraft 2"

 :pedobear:

His use of boy is suspect.

boy - Informal. a grown man, esp. when referred to familiarly

I'm checking my email and b.net account daily, to no avail. In b.net, it will just show up under Manage Account like a WoW account would?

That is what happened for my friend.  I am still without any luck myself.  DoW2 is keeping me busy for now though.

Any word on how this runs on different systems? Given Blizzard's track record I'm guessing it will have low requirements and still look great and run well.

My system is from 2006, and the beta autoset graphics option to Medium, where I have left it.  It runs perfectly fine at 1280x1024.  It's not silky-smooth, but it is fine, and I am generally pretty fussy about frameretes.   Probably 40-50 fps?

The system is a Pentium 4, 3.2 Ghz CPU, 3 gigs memory, and graphics card is a GeForce 8600.  So it's looking good for the older computers!

From the most recent BlizzCast (http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/community/blizzcast/archive/episode13.html?rhtml=y) a couple of days ago, Production Director Chris Sigaty had this to say:

I have a last gen Mac Book Pro, so a Core2Duo at 2.4, 2gigs of ram and an 8600M. I cranked up the resolution pretty high and it looks great. Most detail settings are on high (not ultra) and it runs really well. I was worried at first, but blizz pulled through as usual.

There is a thread on Team Liquid here (http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=113094) which seems to be pretty comprehensive.

I've been watching some videos of games recently, and feel really torn about the game.  On the one hand, it does look fun.  On the other hand, the videos I've seen remind me how bad I am at micro, and that I'm going to be massacred in online play.

Huh? A lot of complaints on TL and other SC forums are that SC2 lacks the kind of micro and soft balance of the original. Honestly, it's probably just because the game is new, and everyone is a noob, but the game currently is much more macro dominant.

I've watched replays of decent players who dont even ctrl-group their units. I would agree that Macro is more dominant atm.
But with my current impressions, I would say SC2 is less of a progressive step than what Blizz accomplished between WC2 and WC3.

That's weird cause it seems like most units have special abilities now and watching the Blizzard guys go at it it looks like even more micro than SC1.

Well, thats to be figured.  I could see that blizzard decided they had 2 RTS franchises, and they needed to differentiate them somehow game play wise.  The original plan was to make WC3 much more RPG hybrid, but they couldn't get it to be fun, so they went with the more moderate approach it turned into.  The hero's, creeps, magical items, lower unit totals overall, ect.  I figured that then, the Starcraft franchise would maintain the role of a more traditional RTS, so SC2 wouldn't be that much different (gameplay wise) than SC1.  Seems to be what they've done.

I'm having serious trouble enjoying it because of how micro it is. I don't know why anyone would say it's more macro.

Because some people aren't completely wrong.

From what I can tell from reading, the economy is less micro, and that's actually pretty huge.

The ability to spawn more resource gatherers and have them as part of their spawn immediately just start mining minerals, or collecting gas is actually pretty huge.

Having said that, from what I can tell the actual unit control is a lot MORE micro, so it all balances out IMO.

Resource crap is a lot easier to micro than shit in the midst of battle.

Well, yes and no...it all depends on what level of gameplay we're talking about.  At our level, sure, but at the higher levels, where literally a couple seconds off getting an SCV mining means a win later in the game that's a big deal.

So it doesn't matter for us peons, but clearly Blizzard is aiming this at the upper eschelons since that's their ready-made audience.

NEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEED


key
 :drillf:

i know im in korea, but some of yall should have actually heard that scream of desperation and despair

I'm having serious problems enjoying this game looking for bugs in this game. Mostly because it does not, in fact, exist on any of my harddrives. :(

I'm awful at this game. They need to release this so I can play against my equal awful palls.

I agree with both of these, but I was hoping for something a little more given how long it has been in development. Currently it really does feel like SC1 reskinned. But then, thats coming from someone who is not really a RTS fan, and doesnt really like to play online except with friends.

The main 'less-micro' thing I noticed is when you grab a whole bunch of gatherers and right click a mineral deposit, they all will go find their own deposit to mine in the immediate area on their own, you don't have to individually send guys to deposits to make sure they're spread out right.

Also when you have a bunch of, say, battlecruisers selected and you fire the Yamato gun, only one of them shoots it off, so you don't have to click through them all individually if you want to fire those off one at a time.

Other than those two things, I haven't noticed much in the way of less micro.

actually there's a lot of automated micro that just didn't exist before - melee units surround automatically, workers acquire targets on a move, units generally move "smarter" (boot up starcraft, build 5 dragoons, tell them to go down a ramp, sit back and enjoy the show). It's all a sub-product of the game actually having an AI that's not coded in '98, but the TL people are really bummed about this. According to them it puts the "skill cap" really low.

The game is awesome btw :P

SC2 DOTA won't take long to appear I'm sure.  Even if it probably is very unneeded at this point.

I'm really looking forward to seeing what mods can be made with this engine, since its pretty damn impressive.  I was blown away by all the awesome mods for WC3, and spent much more time playing them than the original game online (which I also deeply enjoyed). 

Also makes me wonder what sort of modding tools Diablo 3 will have.  Lots of potential there.

THIS.

So what's the word on when open beta starts?

None that i'm aware of, for the time being - but a new wave of invites has apparently started going out.

I thought you where still on your anti mod thing.

There is definitely less 'busy work' Micro, but way more 'spell X vs. unit Y' micro. Like, I can't imagine playing Terran without effective ghost management.

I don't buy games for mods and don't consider them full games. I've probably played 200 mods for Half-Life 2 but you won't see me going all Sky/FFH2 about them, even if they're amazing.

Is it just me, or is the Ground Mode for Vikings utterly useless? Also these stupid things are very expensive and very fragile.

As soon as aI get a beta key, I'll let you know.  From the videos I've seen, they are decent for economy harassment though.  Fly them in, land, blow up some workers, fly away.

They seem to be inferior to Reapers in that regard in almost every way though. I guess if you were sitting on a ridiculous surplus of minerals and gas, you could reactor your way into a silly amount of vikings... but they just cost so much for the hassle.


Terrans are interesting that way though, in that they can play the entire game using their tier 1 units more or less. Still no problem 50 marines can't solve!  :grin:

Vikings in air form are air to air only. If you have no need for air to air for whatever reason transforming them is better than nothing.

I certainly wouldn't build them to try to do something overly clever like fly in, transform and harass when you could just dropship in but if you have them lying around might as well put them to use.

Seems like they are just way to fragile for their costs, especially on the ground.

One thing Vikings do have going for them, is they are Reactor friendly. If you have the resources, you can shit out a ton of them really really quickly.

i would argue that mass Viking rushes against secondary bases is escially effectve for getting In and out without going through a lot of Terrain to get there. Reapers can jump but you can't stick them in unreachable corners of the map. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEU-HSS9ZR0

My favorite replay so far, I thought for sure the Terran was screwed in this one.

Seemed like the Zerg didn't press the advantage when he had it.

Yea, my guess is he thought there was still a siege wall back at the terran base from when he first tried to assault.

New Build nerfed the zerg a bit. Specifically increased the time/cost to research burrowing and the asshole canal. Also rebalanced infestors some. If you're really quick and your opponent is kinda slow, you can mindcontrol a enemy worker to make your own base.They'll kill your Infestor no problem and the worker will revert to enemy control, but the worker will still continue constructing the building unless specifically stopped.  Works best with SCV's as the terran base can just be flown away after it's done.

Basically a comedy option if you totally outclass your opponent.

*burps* (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SCRVrypnPs)...What?

I've been watching way too many replays on that guys channel the last few days.  The last game he put up, game 23, is pretty epic and if you have 45 minutes to burn its fun to watch some epic macro/psi storm/ghost fun.

I will shameless admit to watching every single one of his SC2 videos.

WTT SC2 Key for 2x WoW Timecards PST   :awesome_for_real:

So, I just got a key, would people be interested in a Livestream of this?

Only if you're terrible and go for nothing but hilariously bad gimmick builds.

 :mob:

Only if it lets me see your login so I can steal your account.  :awesome_for_real:

FYI they're starting to send people who are in the beta keys they can use for friend invites.

I'm your friend, pal.

(your applies to anyone who is in the beta)

I will love you long time.

So it turns out sentries are pretty good:

http://www.youtube.com/user/HDstarcraft#p/u/1/2CRf7Ofc-6U

Go to 6:30

Fixed.

I'd love a key if anyone has an extra.

If the friend keys aren't going to someone else, I also wouldn't mind one... Don't know if Blizz will be sending out more, but I can hope right?

That isn't as micro intense as it appears. The Force Fields overlap each other, so you can spam them as fast as you can click (and have mana).



-edit-

My new favorite replay http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSYAIkrwTJY  :heart:

I need a friend... badly! :D They like me, they really like me!

Me too, me too.  :heart:

Add me to your friends lists if you fancy a quick match against someone who is terrible at this. iainz0r(at)gmail(dot)com is the username.

Dammit, why do you people have friends.

Doing this for a friend who wants to see, but in case anyone here cares, Live Streaming right now @ www.livestream.com/newslang

I need a friend ;) I'll love you long time

And done for the night.

I am pretty bad at this game. I'm placed in silver, but I may not be quite good enough.

Better than me, I'm only in copper, heh.

Can I be someone's friend please?

I told myself i wouldn't ask a second time, but sighface, you know, star2>dignity. Me too!

Seems trolling the Starcraft beta-forums can be a nice place to get hold of a key (http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=23766993226&sid=5000).  :awesome_for_real:

If anyone wants to befriend me and let me try this game, I can pay back in other eventual beta keys/invites/friends pass in the future. As in a digital beta friendship contract. Or I can pay you back Italian wine and cheese, if you prefer.

I don't want to be any of your friends.  You can take your keys and stick it!

;D

I'll take Lantyssa's key, then.   :awesome_for_real:

Meeeee!

Crap, I need a friend.

<-- friendless (and to late  :heartbreak:  :awesome_for_real: )

I'll need a friend later on  :heart:

I want a friend.   :awesome_for_real:

I will be a better friend than the person who posts after me.

I'll be a pretty terrible friend and I'm not all that interested in getting into the Beta so Draegan's not saying all that much really.

Just done with my first multiplayer game in SCII.
Me as Terran, opponent as Protoss.
Lasted 38 minutes :O

Near victory for me as I nearly wiped him out, then major fuckup due to incredibly stupid micro-management of banshees/vikings/some other crap --> victory for him instead.  :facepalm:

Another build is up: http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=23094049316&postId=239769018323&sid=5000#6



SCV Nerf :(



-edit- Ladder/User wipe as well. Go get yer names again!

I feel like I've turned a corner, I'm no longer clearly the worst person in team games and I've won two in a row.

Go me!

The league you're in isn't everything. The points you have in your league matter as well.

A high rated gold player is superior to a low rated platinum player after a certain inflection point.

I got moved up to bronze in the latest reset.  I've been getting owned pretty hard.  Then again, I played around 70 games of straight zerg before, and now I am forcing myself to play random so I can practice/learn all the races.

I'm Solaris.megrim if anyone wants to add me. Played my 5 placement matches and got into Gold division #22 or something. Not a bad game. Not a bad game at all.

bhodi.bhodi

Add me. I'm solid high silver with protoss, bronze with everyone else. Getting better, though!

They really need to just open beta this thing.

Oh please oh please oh please oh please.

Best game yet:

part1) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGP1-R9rugo

part2) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkygqX_JIjk

part3) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sphi1jD_LnI

part4) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzE2Jnr0rU0

That was probably the best game I've seen so far. I was watching it live but the stream went down when the nukes started flying. One of the coolest things about that fight is not only was it back and forth edge on seat action, but nearly every unit in the game was showcased doing it.

I also recommend the first game as well. It's short. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMVfFDcy6jI

TLO is great. He actually entered as random. And made it to the finals. That's some balls. And skill.

Yeah, impressive game overall.  He played well in the other games I watched too.  I can only dream of such RTS skills though, so I feel quite bad.  Not that I realistically expect to be able to play as well as top tier players, just that I'd love to be able to even get an inkling of how they do it.

This (http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=117562) is the thread with the replay pack for that entire tournament.

So many other players just seem to give up once they get countered once or their perfectly timed rush build doesn't work. What I love about TheLittleOne is how often he seems to just go "fuck it, wing it!  :oh_i_see:".

Those replays were really fun to watch despite me not knowing much about StarCraft.  The announcer's reactions when he would see something unconventional was great.

Not favoring a race while the other guy does is a not insignificant advantage if you can play multiple races well.

After watching those clips I have to chime in and sing the LittleOne's praises. I loved how versatile and malleable his tactics were. He kept switching his attack units and managed near-constant harassment from the early game on. Fantastic diversionary nuke deployment, too.

My RTS skills are deeply entrenched in the sucky end of the scale, but it's always enjoyable to watch two titans of micromanagement duke it out, even if it does foster slight pangs of jealousy and deep-seated feelings of inadequacy.

Just played a pretty fun Terran vs Terran game! Lasted around 20 minutes, with lots of different units being involved (marines, marauders, siege tanks, medvacs, banshees, vikings, a couple of thors - even a battle cruiser :) I guess neither of us played really smart, but was fun nonetheless.

Replay here (http://www.xoduz.org/files/2010-03-30_02-32-50_Terran_vs_Terran.SC2Replay), in case anyone wants to criticize my n00bness at Starcraft 2!

It's definitely worth watching TLO in the finals. He doesn't win, but boy howdy does he pull off some amazing shit.

Well, downloaded the beta and playing single player but can't seem to get the more difficult AI to work, seems to be stuck in idiot mode.

I think that is intentional so people will actually play against each other online.

I had a quick look; a few general pointers...


While you are playing on newbie maps, it's a good idea to start getting used to 'normal' play. Start learning how to wall-in your choke as t, 1 rax, 2 supply, etc...

Keep an eye on your supply count. You got supply blocked at one point during the beginning. It's not a major thing, but having it not happen will smooth out your transitioning.

Normally, one would use their rax scv to scout, but since you are on newbie maps, i would have used your quick reaper to run around the map and saved the energy for mules instead of scanning. You will need scan later, but initially it's a better idea to utilize the resources.

Also, just keep in mind to turn off your banshee cloaking to conserve energy. And keep your scvs mining! You peons at your nat were sitting around doing nothing for about half the game =)

After that it mostly a matter of your units kill his units better - but there is one important lesson to be learned in this. You probably noticed how you were out producing him for the most part; this was in part due to your early natural expansion.

This is important, because at lower levels, often just having a +1 source of income over the opponent, and assuming equal unit replenishment rates will be enough to ensure a victory. So with that in mind - if you see that your opponent is sitting on one base while you have expanded, and it looks like you have the advantage in terms of winning fights around the map, knock down the rocks blocking you choke and expand again.

The progression for winning games at this stage is quite elementary. More income = more unit production buildings = more units. If you have more units, you win.




 * one minor sidenote on peon production. Keep it up. Not taking into account MULE income, you need about 2 scvs per mineral patch. So with eight patches be base, you will need about 16 peons. Suffice it to say, you will need to keep the command center blinking for about the first 20 minutes.

+3 per geyser. And although the hardcore numbercrunching hasn't really begun yet, some people have suggested that 2 per mineral, although optimal, isn't totally saturated. So it might be a good idea to not cut workers at your main, and wait until you have a significant surplus of them to build your first expo, then maynard the extra over and start mining immediately.

Finally got the internet at my new place. Please bring on an Open Beta.

The first two scv (or equivalent of course) per node, nab 100% efficiency...then the 3rd grabs 55% efficient.  Then it drops sharply after that.  I think the 4th ends up around 18% efficient.

So as far as I can tell from reading up on things, the strat is slam the first 16 out as fast as possible, then begin tech to whatever it is you want, while spending spare minerals (since you're usually bound by gas anyway) on more scv loving.

It's also universally held/known that it's 3 per collector.  Any more than that and they simply queue outside the collector and don't increase your gains any.

Thanks for the feedback! I usually do go with the supply + barracks + supply wall but skipped it in this game because of the newbie map.

I've got the start down alrightyish, I think, but unfortunately lose focus on the svc production as I go along. I also seem to consistently be having problems getting my expansions up and running properly (forgetting about the peons, as you said, for half the game), overfocusing on tech/unit production. In some cases I also tend to bunker up too much instead of going on the offensive. :|

Have been winning about half the matches I've played so far (around 12-14 total I think - all as Terran, and all practice matches/ladder placement matches directly before and after the wipe), though some of those victories felt a bit cheap =P Reaper-rush, kill opponents harvesters, clean up :P I guess I should play some zerg/protoss as well, to get to know them better and such.

Edit: Also, I don't know when to quit even when it's clear that I'll eventually lose - so I'm probably a pain in the ass to play against. ;P

Truth is, the vast majority of games are over in ~10 minutes, often less.  At least its true of the ones I've played.  Attacking early isn't cheap.  I mean there are a few cheese tactics, like a six pool, or a proxy gateway, or whatever, but just doing your normal build order but attacking early on is just how you're supposed to play.  20+ minute games where both players are at max supply and have an epic battle seems to be the expception.

I'd rather play online but I'm not in the beta.  I downloaded the beta launcher and all of that and the single player launchers you can find.  It has a bunch of info about the AI and files for more difficult AIs but I can't seem to get them to work.  :uhrr:

I can't help but notice that nobody's sent me Lantyssa's key yet.  If someone could get on that, that'd be great, yeah, thanks.

 Game 1  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ibHsNOIkEQ&feature=related)
 Game 2  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ncb7lHNWbnU)
 Game 3  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPkNNNrWMZo)
 Game 4  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56nwQ9IRSPU)

Games 1 and 2 are brilliant, 3 and 4 are a bit more standard.

Patch! : http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=23094049316&sid=5000&pageNo=1#7



Static Defense buffs are interesting, since Blizzard seemed to go out of their way to make them unappealing to begin with.

It seems like they are softening up the +damage v. particular types in favor of more upfront damage against everyone.  Patch 6 saw a couple similar moves.  I am torn about that as a design decision.  On the plus side, more units are more viable in more situations.  On the down side, it means that games might get even more homogenized, because you could say something like "Well, this unit is terrible against X anymore, instead of switching my meta to something else, I'll just see if I can produce extras to make up the difference" saving yourself the tech switch.   Then again, I'm not exactly a starcraft veteran, so I don't have that much useful input on how this will actually effect things, its just me musing.

Realistically, playing a few games after the patch, I don't notice any huge differences, but maybe the difference is bigger to the number crunchers in the platinum division.

Don't let the size of the numbers fool you. For example, pre-patch a Thor could bring down a Muta in two attacks. Now it would take three attacks.


That's a very significant change multiplied across entire armies.



-edit- How u spell.

Well, yeah the Thor change is just a straight nerf.  I'm talking about the trend towards say, 25+ 5 instead of 20 + 10.  Same amount of damage v. the armored unit, more v. everything else.

EDIT: Then again, it appears we forgot to take in to account the new splash damage. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWvvpzgalNY (of course, this isn't exactly a normal situation)

Yeah, nobody ever masses muta.

More to the point, noone masses thors.

If any Terran is able to pump out that many Thor's, they've already won 15 minutes ago.



The REAL question would be is the Thor now worth more then say just another bunch of Marines or Vikings. Is it worth dragging a couple of them along, slowing down the rest of your forces? Shit, is a Thor worth more then just bringing an SCV along to make Turrets everywhere you go?  :why_so_serious:

hum...


          o Spore Crawler

                + The cost has been decreased from 100 to 75.

Nice... But the banshees got more health. I play a zerg and every single terran in platinum has learned to wall off without supplies and rush banshees. They're a bitch to deal with early on, even worse because scouting banshees is super hard and their natural counters get destroyed by helions...

Also on the gold vs platinum players - before the reset I was a solid top 10 gold player, right now I'm struggling keeping above 1000ELO in platinum. So I'd say I disagree.

If anyone on eu wants to add me: wolf.iclan

The lack of Zerg anti-air in tier one seems like it could become a major balance nightmare. It really limits how good all the other air units in the game can be given that a zerg player with one or two queens has to be able to survive against them or protect their overlords.

There were a glorious couple of weeks before Terrans cought up, when baneling bust would work in 95% of the games. Right after that the helion opening was really popular, and it was pretty good, you get out a couple of roaches while teching up, counter that, you bought tech up and expansion up and you have a game. And the last couple of weeks I've been getting Banshee rushed almost every time, it's super annoying. Been trying to figure out a way to ninja suicide a slow overlord to scout, but if I miss the timing I just lose an ovie and learn nothing.

Anyway, what they want you to do right now is turtle up, which I really hate :(

It's pretty awesome how quickly the meta game is evolving in beta though :)

Take fast natural and turtle while massing roaches. Get lair, research tunneling hooks. Fight off the shee harass and burrow your roach mass into his main. 99% of terrans don't build sensor towers or missile turrets.

Just like that :)))) Roaches don't shoot up you know :)

This game is still in beta and the geek talk is already so thick you'd need a machete to cut it.

Why should whether or not the game is in beta factor into it?

The lack of sensor towers really boggles my mind. I always build at least 1 at my main. If I have the spare gas, I'll just make a entire sensor net, it's almost like a maphack or cheat code at that point!

I always forget I can make them as Terran.  Then again, I just started playing random since the last reset and before that had played a grand total of 1 game of terran v. very easy computer when I first got into the beta just to see everything.  But yeah, I always see the ring when I am playing as Zerg or something and think, sonnofabitch now its going to be hard to sneak in a nydus worm.

That's exactly why every Terran should have at least one guarding their main, easiest protection against the damn tunnel worm.

Ok fair point, it's no that easy. But still - it's not that hard either. I'd say most of the difficulty comes from scouting it correctly, because after that queen/spore should do it. Banshees come way late, unless he does some weirdo double-gas before rax build, and even then, he is investing so much gas into the off-chance of doing enough damage that probably just building six or so reapers with +1 weapons would be more effective.

Th opening is analogous to the fast void-ray in pvz. If you over commit (or, like most zerg trained by star1 are just greedy and assume that you can get your natural for free), yes it can kill you. Actually, i'd go so far as to say that stargate openings for p are more dangerous to zerg, because he can reinforce his void-rays with phoenix and do cheesy shit like graviton beam your queens and hydra to kill them in the air.

Well the big deal is that one banshee can kill one queen, even before they got extra health. I've been playing around with a build - 14 Pool, 14 Hatch, one gas, quick evo chamber and about that time sack an overlord to scout - that will be about the time he'll either have the 3rd rax building, the starport building, or some sort of addon for his factory - so I know what he does and respond correctly. The thing is that this is highly dependant on timing and sacking the overlord at the correct time. Found a friend of a friend that's playing terran, going to do some customs tonight :)

Once I figure that out, I think I'll start playing random for a bit. Get to see all match ups and learn all races before I go back to playing Zerg.

btw void ray timing is quite later than the banshee harass and you can see it from a mile, due to the quite later AA and having an overlord see everything - like getting double gas, straight tech with one gate, etc.

Truth be told, this is starting to wear on me.  I'm only in Bronze division for 1v1, so maybe its a matter of skill level, but I really feel like it is rush or be rushed, and the vast majority of games I play are over, or have effectively been decided by the 10 minute mark(often by the 6 or 7 minute mark).  Try for an interesting build order and you're likely to get demolished by something very standard.   Maybe I just suck, and that is a very real possibility, but I find myself winning and losing about equal number of games, and the ones where I win its because I did something really standard and pushed early.  If I try to harass early while teching up, or something, I end up not having enough units to defend the inevitable big push that is going to come around 7 minutes into the game.  If I try to wall in as terran and tech up while defending, I get overwhelmed early.  

I play random, and that is part of the problem I guess, I still don't feel comfortable with all the matchups.  But even as I learn and get better, I feel like I'm basically tied to a small handful of strategies or I might as well just gg right from the start.


Also yes, I just did have a pretty bad losing streak where I was trying out different strategies, so part of this post is just pure frustrating coming out, and it probably isn't indicative of my overall experience in SC2, but it does seem to be going more and more in this direction.

Anyone else have an opinion on this that is in the beta?

That's exactly why I only played cooperatively against AI in the first game.

Yep. Sadly, the entire early to early-mid game is basically 2-3 different builds per race. Then again, there weren't that many in SC1 either, so there isn't much difference. I'm definitely hoping they will tune up things to allow a few more interesting strategies. The recent buff to defensive structures should limit a few of the extreme rushes.

In bronze it very much is 'copy the latest strategy'. In the lower games, a backdoor/harassment works extremely well, as does rush to air, so you might want to try that.

Well standart play is standart because it's incredibly solid. The more you try to be tricky, the bigger the chance you fail and the more it requires of you as a player. The original starcraft more or less has one viable "strategy" for each match up and it all boils up to execution, but as there is no "skill cap" it's a very entertaining game to spectate. It was an incredibly big deal when last season Flash (korean pro) figured out a new way to open vs. protoss, which secured him an earlier expo. The result was him dominating both star leagues. I'm going to guess starcraft 2 will move in that direction too, it's what the game is.

It's kind of hard to give you some tips as you play random, but right now only mirrors are relegated to "do this or die" and even that is chaning a bit (right now there's two viable strategies in zvz). Anyway, you should be getting longer games, maybe try to build some more static defenses and expand early if you don't want quick games. If you go for macro games, however, remember to upgrade whatever unit composition you're going to be using.

edit: just noticed something in your post. Well 10 minute is hardly a rush, a rush is if someone six pool'ed you and you have zerglings in your base at the 3 minute mark. A 13-15 minute game is a very standard game with at least one huge army battle (like 120ish control each), a 20 minute game is rare, anything above that is an "epic" game :) Especially in SC2 with the new macro mechanics, games start rolling real quick.

I think part of it is game snese.  I have a real tough time "feeling" when its the right time to attack, not to attack, etc.  I feel like I'm just wining it all the time, and I am terrible at scouting after the early game, I just forget to do it, even when I tell myself before the game, scout scout scout, it just gets lost in my desperate attempt to keep up in terms of macro.  I feel like I don't have the "mental bandwidth" required to play these games as well I want to, when I sit down and think about it, I can think of a dozen things I could've done better in any given game, but then when I got and play again, I make the same mistakes.  Its supremely frustrating.

For example:  I was just playing a TvP.  I decided to go for MMM.  I successfully destroyed his exapansion, then went to attack his main base with 3 drop ships filled with MM.  I saw about 5 stalkers and was so worried that my medivacs were going to die before I could drop, losing everything in them, that I pulled back.  Later, I got attacked and killed (about 3 minutes later).  The guy informed me that if I had attacked right at the moment when i ALMOST did, I probably would have beaten him.    That sort of total lack of feel for what the right decision is what really gets me, because I don't seem to be improving all the much in that area.  Sure, my ability to micro and macro gets better the more I play, but I'm pretty bad at deciding what I actually need to do to win.

Post replays brosef, it's the only way we can help you.

The only way you get a "feel" for when to attack is by playing more games. I had the same problem too but just persevered and noticed certain paterns as to how big an enemies army can possibly be at any point in time as long as he hasn't sneaked in a gold mineral expansion somewhere but then that's only dealt with by being aggressive and learning to meaintain map control long enough for you to expand and contain the enemy. Playing it safe is a much better way to get better then trying wild builds when your macro/micro mechanics aren't as good as you would like. Once your "mechanics" are up to par, you can start experimenting with your builds and toying with your enemy.

Something about the Zerg just breaks my brain when I try to play them. Something about how all their production is centralized around the hatch/larva's, I never get a good handle on it. I just seem to go from hundreds of minerals to zero minerals to hundreds again, in these huge chunks.

I know what you mean, they really don't work for me either. The amount of larva they can spawn if you have 2 hatch + 2 queen is just too much for me to get my head round. You really need to plan ahead as to when you're going to either save up larvea for units or build drones for a stronger econ.

Zerg in 2v2 is frustrating, no way to protect your base

I just played a game where my base was killed and I spent the rest of the time flying around with a single Overseer spotting enemy expansions, scouting and detecting cloaked units. We won but it was pretty silly.

Sentries are awesome  :heart:

part 1) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wwz9hh3Ch8c
part 2) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUJ5rsGfKNU


One or two is a nice little addition, but if you can reach a certain critical mass, it just gets ridiculous.  :evil:

I just played an awesome 2v2, me Zerg and my Protoss newb random partner against coordinated double zerg. The enemy team built tons of lings, banelings and hydralisks. They kept almost taking down our base (this was Twilight Fortress, the map where you start next to your partner with one shared choke) but they couldn't quite seal the deal. I was steadily teching and they weren't. Finally they push in and my partner quits. As he's quitting about 20 of my zerglings hatch and kill the hydras that were killing his base. So to counter the huge number of banelings I switch to roaches along with ultras and start hoarding ultras. This is the first game I've played where I've even *seen* an ultra. Meanwhile I have no idea how to play as protoss so in my partner's base I queue up some immortals and some carriers. So now I have one carrier, 2 immortals, about 10 roaches and 4 or 5 ultralisks, march straight into the opponent's base and take it out while other ultralisks run around the map taking down their expansions.

This is the second game I've won well after my partner quit out. I played about the last 9 minutes 2 on 1. Very satisfying to win that way.

Thanks god they didn't go air because the one carrier was the only thing I had that could hit air at all.

I'm tempted to say I'm done with this game.  I've had a love hate relationship with it every moment since installing it, and I just don't think I can take it anymore.  Its a combination of me not being very good at RTS games to begin with, the absolutely brutal learning curve, the razor slim margin for error even in lower level leagues.  I just feel totally defeated by it, then went for e-sport, and they definitely got it, I just can't handle it. 

Even when I feel like I am getting better at the game, I feel like I'm getting better slower than the rest of my competition, its just such a losing battle, and I'm only in the god damn bronze league, fuck that.  Whatever it is that one needs to play and be good at Starcraft 2, I don't have it, and I don't care enough to acquire it.   

Its a good game, Blizzard did a good job on it, i just don't think its for me.  Sad to say.

I've always found there are effectively three different "games" in an RTS like this...

There's the single player campaign which can be a lot of fun if you're into that (but it's not part of beta).

There's the playing online against the crazy hardcore people which wears me down pretty fast.

There's lan play with friends or coworkers, which was how I always played, and I found more enjoyable.

If it's any consolation, I'm in the same boat. I fully acknowledge that I might as well play RTS games by rolling my face on the keyboard, so any attempt to really get into titles like SC2 will only end in frustration – especially as the will to get better is not really there.

I do enjoy watching skilful players and reading discussions on strategy though, because I can follow to an extent and recognise the genius within. Anything more involving than cheering on the sidelines and enjoyment gives way to tears.

The pace of the game really is super fast and there is very little margin for error given how quickly battles go and how quickly bases die. It's very stressful. I think you have to be content to know you probably won't be among the top players and be ok with that.

I'm in it for just 1 and 3 myself.

I don't mind not being among the top players, I have no illusions about being like, legitimately good, I'd just like to have an RTS for once where I can reliably get consistent, fun, evenly matched games. Sometimes I win sometimes I lose, rarely I get a long even matched back and forth game, or even a close short game for that matter.  I mean, maybe I make myself sound worse than I am, I have roughly the same amount of losses and wins at any given time, I just feel like whoever I get matched up against almost entirely determines whether I win or lose.

But like you said, its very stressful.  I don't mind stress in the "oh wow this is really close omg omg omg" type moments, but this is the kind of stress that makes me feel that twinge in my chest when I even boot up the game, knowing that if I don't play perfect (or, as well as I can, to be more exact), I might as well not play at all, and thats just not the fun kind of stress that can be equated with excitement, its the kind of stress that I get enough in real life without having to worry about it in video games.

This is a ladder system designed well. We play together fairly well, and we are both above average players. We're also correctly placed with other above average players; Only one or two of our many games have been a stomping one way or the other, and, like you, my win/loss record is almost completely even.

I would not worry overmuch about playing against big burly men (http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2002/7/26/); unlike, say, LoL, you are actually paired with people of your skill level, whether you are a korean APM monster or a 65 year old arthritic grandmother with a baby on her lap.

Even in the beta, there are enough people playing that I've only gotten severely and obviously outclassed a handful of times (in 100+ games). When it goes live, The number of people will increase 10fold, many of them on the lower/less skilled area of play.

The only regret I have is that I'm unable to experiment and try new things, since I'll get steamrolled. But then again, that's what FFA and custom games are for I suppose.

The SC2 devs have mentioned that they are a little worried that the Beta experience is a little like throwing someone into the shark tank and asking them to learn to swim.


The Retail game will be much more friendly to average joe, with multiple AI levels to fight against and a wider variety of non-ladder games to choose from. Hell even just being to play the game on 'normal' speed instead of whatever it currently defaults too would be a big boon for me personally.

If your record is basically even win-loss wise that means the matchmaking system is working just about perfectly, yeah. I wonder if it is just straight ELO more or less, or if it also takes into account factors like APM, etc.? I know they have the capability to track all kinds of wacky stats that they could theoretically be integrating into the matchmaking.

Well APM can be inflated pretty easily with useless cheese if you actually give a shit about the raw stat.

I think the real problem isn't that I care about the wins and losses per se.  I'd like to have good games.  I don't really feel that most of my games are all that good. 

It's the feeling of "fuck, I built my barracks on peon 12 not 11, jesus christ I am dooooomed" right? I hate that shit too.

To be fair, this game is made for a very specific type of player.

Well yeah, that goes back a couple posts to the general stressed and uncomfortable feeling I get from playing the game.  More to the point though, I feel like I have very few hard fought wins, and when I lose I don't feel like I've generally put up all that good a fight. There are very few games that I look back and say "Well, there was this critical moment where the game is even and one player took the upper hand" or whatever.  Its more like, welllllll, that guy was just better than me right from the beginning or vice versa.

Yeah, I have the same feeling.  It's why I haven't played it in over a week now.

We need to setup more comedy FFA's then! Where Ingmar tries to voidray rush me and I skillfully shoo him away with my endless steam of marines.


Marines, the answer to every problem in SC2  :heart:

"rush"

It was a rush relative to our usual speeds!

I've never enjoyed hardcore ladder play all that much in SC, and I don't see myself doing any of that in SC2.  I'll buy it for the single player campaign.  If there's any fun to be had in the FFA pubtard scene, which is where I got most of my multiplayer yuks in SC1, so much the better.

Don't forget that the full game will have the scenario editor with it, which will bring the innevitable dotas with it :)

I'm still having tons of fun, but than agian I was competing at national level way back when in the early days of brood war, so I'm kind of having a throwback moment here. The only annoying thing is the level of cheese in ladder. Got 6 pooled 3 (!!!!) games in a row in zvz yesterday. Ragequit out of the last one.

That's the main reason I've played Blizzard RTSs, for the custom maps. Fooling around second and the campaign third.

Bnet name! Let's do 2v2s!  Also fuck the 6pool. What bullshit. If you scout it fast enough, or if they can't micro well enough you can defend, sorta, otherwise it's a game oooverrr.

The custom maps are gonna be great. I'm sure the most famous ones will be ported immediately.

Wolf.iclan I'm eu though.

The "newest" sixpool is super annoying. 6 pool, 2 drones mine for a bit send out two scouts on a bigger map; make 6 zerglings and pop two sunkens in opponents base. Gg :(

Got a replay?

Damn EU. No way for us to play I guess. I hate these stupid boundaries.

Patch: http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=23094049316&postId=242397824179&sid=5000#9



Finally, Marauders and Roaches get their much needed nerfs.

That's a lot of number changes. Good thing in the long run, but given the long development cycle of the game, I would have thought more things would have been spot on.

The Roach was just overpowered, so in order to counter the Roach, they had to make the Marauder also overpowered. I wouldn't be surprised if Immortals got a little +armored dmg nerf on the side as well.


The Thor build time decrease is just so people might actually build one or two  :awesome_for_real:

oh wow :) They just broke any roach strat in zvz. Zergling used to destroy Roaches with +1 attack, now they have it by default. Marauders change is no biggie, so almost nothing to address the triangle of boring (Roach, Mara & Immortal), except for a small Roach nerf.

Where can I upload that replay?

The first replay I see with Thors and it is pure cheese (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vP3egyvH-DU)  :why_so_serious:

Well, we all know mechs would rock in real combat. They have to model that in the game.

Now that was hilarious.

Since I know nothing about the pro-Starcraft scene you guys need to keep posting cool replays.  I enjoy watching them.

So, I ended up uninstalling this, and haven't missed it at all.  I guess that pretty much sums it up for me.

I got my beta email a few days ago. And no, none of you can have my friends key. Mostly because I didn't get one. If any of you are having trouble, hit me up at Goreschach.goreschach. This game is kicking my ass. Figured I wouldn't be so rusty at starcraft, but then I haven't played in like 5 years. My multitasking seems to be nonexistent.

Can I gave your stuff?

Dude's Ego hits you for 999 damage!

"This is just a casual game."  "Look at this stoopid noob!"  "OMG!  He didn't place the building five feet to the right, what an idiot."  "I'll be honest with you... he sucks."

This game is definitely not for me.  Thanks for the preview.

No, multiplayer is definitely a game for the hardcore. Single player is what they'll hand off to the n00bs, and RTS isn't the first thing I think of when I think "strong game mechanics to tell a story with."

When the guy in the THOR video who was talking about building 5 inches to the left was talking about his own placement.

Oh, and can someone link a cool Protoss replay using protoss' high end tech stuff?

That guy is a total douche. Don't judge it based on him.

Don't know how many times we can say that the beta is 1v1 which by default is filled with assmunchers and cockgoblins. The "real" game is going to be a whole lot more.

Pretty much; there's two channels I'm watching for beta games, Husky (Thor Guy) and HDStarcraft. Husky is a raging douche, HDStarcraft comes over as a lot more down to earth in his commentary.


I haven't really seen any good games where any of the Tier 3 units come into play.  I'm yet to see carriers, thors, ultralisks or motherships used in any game; this is product of the rush tendency in high-level 1v1 I guess. Fun gives way to efficiency  :oh_i_see:

Here's a game that features Dark Templar and Brood Lords and has quite a lot of back and forth in it.
PART 1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q02GKfPfMMs)
PART 2 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LhSOsHdaf8)
PART 3 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sm1zWWsSATI)

A fun game showcasing Helions and Hydralisks (which I haven't seen used much)
Part 1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeRkGSFLjww)
Part 2 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_UKcWlq_ng&feature=related)

I just watched a replay where the winning Protoss player rushed a mothership, ill see if I can find it when I get home if no one beats me to it.

Collector's Edition details:

http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/press/pressreleases.html?100408

Seems easy enough, buy the collectors edition, sell the WoW Thor pet code on eBay to make up the differance.

Well, fact of the matter is, if you do something like build a second pylon before a gateway, you're in big trouble against most people.  Its the kind of thing that frustrated the crap out of me, one less than optimal choice and you're probably going to lose if the other person didn't make a similar mistake.  90% of every game I was trying just not to make mistakes instead of actually ...ya know...playing.

qualtiy starcraft:

http://www.youtube.com/nevake - Team Liquid's Channel, most of it is without commentary, but they're only good games.

http://www.youtube.com/MajorLeagueGaming - MLG's king of the beta hill series is amazing. And Day[9] is probably the best starcraft caster out there, he's geniunily in love with the game and has deep, deep knowledge about it.

http://www.gosugamers.net/starcraft2/news/11695-vods-gosucup-starcraft-2-beta-invitational-ro16 - VODs from GosuGamer's SC2 Beta Invitational ro16; good stuff - Still haven't seen liquid'nazgul (p), mondragon (z) - it's basicaly one of the best forigners vs the most dominant forigner (read: non-korean) in the bw scene; should be AMAZING. I have had a mancrush on mondragon for ages :P

http://www.livestream.com/striderdoom - Day[9]s channel on livestream, has some Zotac tournament casts, stay away from any of the daily stuff, unless you're REALLY into starcraft :)

http://www.youtube.com/sc2ggrise - Rise has been doing some commentaries, but he's mostly doing US players and mostly Team EG, which are lagging quite a bit behind the top EU players.

I'll post more stuff if there's interest :)

btw, it's probably just not your game. This is what Starcraft is. If it was anything else I'd be pretty pissed; There will be a SHITLOAD of DoTA type stuff in the full game though, plus comp stopms, etc. Competitive play will not be the only thing there is :)

I'll get it five years later when it's $20 and play the campaigns then.  The $60 pricetag is a little more than I'd be willing to pay even if I thought it was Robot Jesus.

Wait, are you saying DOTA isn't competitive? Most people who play DOTA are slobbering retards with no social skills who just want to scream and rant at people who are worse than them (no offense intended, and jk btw). Actually they don't even need to be worse. Everybody just tries to tell everybody else what to do.

I haven't played WoW in years, and I want to buy the collectors edition just to have the Thor pet.

Hmmm I'm not seeing all that much of a basis for DoTA style play in SC2 - no hero units, no inventory or items, no leveling. And that stuff isn't in the single player either.

Possibly, but considering the probable depth of the SC2 map editor I imagine it won't be that hard to make one. I'm also pretty damn sure Blizzard knows this as well  :awesome_for_real:

Don't underestimate the Galaxy editor. Based on the previews I have seen floating around that thing is astonishingly powerful; to the extent of writing your own game-within-game level of modification I think.

Also, since when was online gaming not dominated by a bunch of arrogant wannabe-fratboys? Especially in competitive gaming.

The galaxy editor preview from Blizzcon (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5Pi9rlUuYM) (recap)

:awesome_for_real:

Seriously, I don't think I've ever played single multi player game game ever where I wasn't constantly playing against people like that when playing with the general public.  I just take it for granted thats how multi player gaming is and just take it for what it is.

Interesting stuff, I hadn't watched that yet.

Did that guy introduce himself as, "H to the usky?"  Did I hear that right?  Holy shit!

Blizzard probably missed a good cash opportunity if they had included beta keys in the collectors edition if you pre-order now.  No refunds once the key is redeemed or something.

Was that Thor video before the recent changes or after? It seems to have been posted around the same time?

Anyhow. Watching a lot of youtube videos and enjoying it heaps. I don't really get why so many of you in here are so shocked by the multi-player being so competitive, though. You still have single player, user maps, and just a fun game with your friends to play with... and how do you stop people being competitive anyhow if it's multi-player? People will make anything competitive if they're like that, and many enjoy doing so, it would be far stranger, and worse for sales and the fun of the game (not to mention impossible), if Blizzard somehow designed the game to make things like building placement and build order irrelevant...

Btw if anyone has a friends key to share with me, I will send you delicious dates in the mail!

Do you run a Russian Mail Order Bride service or something?

Yeah I just heard that.  That dude is too white to be saying that. 

Same.  I have no illusions about surviving at all in competitive online games.  I don't pay enough attention to build order optimization and all that insanity, and honestly I don't want to.  Some casual 1v1 or 2v2 with friends who aren't super-hardcore is enough multiplayer for me.

The Warcraft III matching service was awesome since it tended to put you in amongst people of similar skill.

I was chatting with a friend earlier, and I think I was able to figure out my issues with the game a little more.

I think its that Starcraft 2 seems to play best at the high end and isn't nearly as good at the low to middle skill range.  When I see awesome games casted on youtube, I think, "Wow, if I had that experience, I would love this game"  But I don't.  And I got to thinking why, and I think it has something to do with the fact that as you get lower and lower in skill level, the more things like build order matter.   In a high end match, build order obviously matters a lot, but if you are sufficiently skilled, you can do things like fight off a bigger army at your ramp while you are teching up with a smaller army that is built for solid defense and microed well.  At my skill level, a bigger army pretty much wins, period, barring things like hard counters (invis units v. no detectors or something).   That means that the best consistent strategy in the lower skill levels is just to build lots of units really fast and whoever makes more units before the initial push generally wins.  That doens't make for a very fun game in my opinion.

For this very reason, I sort of want to see the game not perform to expectations.

Instead what I expect is that it'll sell well due to hype, "It's Blizzard!", and WoW Fanatics trying to get a Thor. Well-played, but sort of hollow.

I wants the Thor pet, but I'm still grinding my teeth over the three boxes for each storyline thing.

I blame RTS game design and how they wanted to do something with single player that was counter-intuitive to telling a story from three different perspectives. Also, let's just toss Bobby in there for good measure.

I think making sequential campaigns actually makes it easier to tell a better story, where all the major characters interact more. Having three parallel stories where everyone goes from zero to hero makes for some weird narrative issues.

I have high hopes for the single player campaigns; and I know private play with friends and housemates where we just tech up on money maps will keep us sufficiently entertained.

My problem is I actually don't like that kind of game very much.  I like the quick nature of the games, I like early attacks, I like a lot of back and forth WHILE teching up, and so forth.  I like having to expand to get sufficient resources and I like the idea of fighting over a limited number of resources on the map (even more pronounced with high yield resources in SC2.  The problems, however, are like I mentioned earlier so I won' state them again here.

Playing DoW2 along side this really made me realize how much I like the direction that DoW2 has taken the RTS genre.  Too bad it hasn't caught on as much, even though it does definitely have plenty of people playing it.

It's not like Blizzard can forge off into new game design territory at this point with any of their properties without pissing off their fan base. It would be interesting to see what happens after their next MMO, SC2, and D3. But that's probably a solid decade out.

Kinda like Bungie and Halo right now.

Well, thats true, I wasn't suggesting that Blizzard drastically change SC2 to make it more like DoW2, just commenting on why I like on more than the other.   Starcraft is an interesting story because I think the reason it was originally popular is VERY different from the reason is stayed popular for so long.  It became an esport, but SC2 has to aim for being esport off the bat.

I really hope I'm not bloodworthing this because it's way too awesome:

Starcraft 2 Beta Break Up (http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1932078)  :awesome_for_real:

Scroll down and read the comments. (http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=118810)

HAHAHAHAHA. If you stop at the first page you'll live a happier life than going on further.

You are.  :uhrr:

Why not blame the actual problem: they want more money.

I like Starcraft 2 but I too hope it doesn't perform as well as it seems destined to. Breaking it up into 3 games irks but my main problem is just how ultraconservative it is. When SC1 came out the graphics were awesome while the graphics of SC2 are merely average. In the era of Starcraft 1 having three different races with different units and mechanics was pretty special. More than ten years later the same three races with the same units and mechanics is underwhelming. It's like if Street Fighter 4 came out without the Alpha or Three series in between it and 2 and had no new characters.

Starcrat 2 is a victim of its own success, and the manner of its success.  While new races, or crazy new mechanics might seem like a great idea, the reason Starcraft is such a popular series is that it became an e-sport.  Blizzard has to live up to what happened basically accidentally in SC1, on purpose with SC2.   Not to mention, its hard enough to balance 3 races well.  Add in another and balance is going to be a nightmare.  Same with new units really.  Look at the balancing act they are already trying to do with the roach and marauder.

I didn't see him post it anywhere.

Personally, I'd like to see the DOW series ditch the RTS aspect altogether and go turn based or semi-turn based 40k proper. I liked DOW, but the control point scheme didn't change the way I play RTSes in any measurable way. It's still all about pumping out units until the other guy dies. And I hate squads. They just don't feel right. IMO of course.

I'd like to see a new AAA multiplayer turn based tactics game. We haven't had one in a long time.

Bloodbowl!!!

Well okay, AAA perhaps not, but it is fun if they could just fix the fucking league stuff.

http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/632/Laser+Squad.html

Granted 1992 counts as 'a long time' ago, but we don't really need anything else.

From the description, when he mentions LSN-


I think this guy fails at math.

LS != LSN

No shit, Sherlock. I found that little comment in the LS download page amusing and wanted to share. Because I care. I care to share.

DAMMIT!

So then how does he fail at math?

5 bucks a month is very cheap.

This is a particularaly good replay; it showcases pretty much every protoss and zerg unit in a tight game.

Part 1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwLsmi9VE2U)
Part 2 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T44gfFrbj7A)
Part 3 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmlMzFZMm8o)
Part 4 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ji92y--TZAI)

Very fun reply to watch, although I have to agree with the commentators that the zerg player probably could of ended the game much earlier with a few different decisions.

Yea, there was very little reason for the zerg player to allow those island expo's to live. At the same time, being able to just respawn 100-150 supply worth of army every 20 seconds has to be pretty fun too!  :grin:


Here is that match's up polar opposite in terms of game scale: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pETcAm82vXU


Insane Stalker micro.

Wow.  Makes me want to play, and yet, be afraid to play.

Fucking Hell.

Indeed, I like seeing IdrA lose though.  He seems like a total ass.

Whoa, that was hectic

It warms the heart every time I see him lose. But it's so much better when he goes off. Nazgul kicked him out of the latest Zotac this Sunday, and Idra went out with "I don't know why I bother playing on this server"; "It lags so bad". And left without GG. So nice :)

Why starcraft is awesome:

http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=117936&currentpage=38

tl;dr version: Smuft a member of the TL community is betting $5000 that if he played 8 hours a day for a week he can beat Idra. Some people on TL are backing Idra up, so the result is a $10000 bo5 grudge match :)

I will almost certainly get this game when the single player campaign can be gotten all at once for a reasonable price. That shit with Idra is great soap opera but fuck me those guys live in some bizarre alternate world (especially since I'm not much into gambling either).

Must of been a new wave of invites this am my name is:

bin.fuser

Excuse me while I go cry in the corner some more.  :heartbreak:

:sad:

Bleh.

Nothing in my email.

Nothing on battle.net.

FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUU-

Yep, my mail box is depressingly empty.

Oh hey, I remembered a friend of mine from college has a brother who works at Blizzard.  I just got a shiny new beta key!

That's just mean.

Remember to check your spam folders.

I'm crossing my fingers that my updated system specs of "Desktop resolution: 6004x1080" will increase my chances of getting an invite since I'm a less common setup now.  :uhrr:

Finally got in, just played two games. First one against a very easy comp just to get a handle on things. Won that, then did a 1v1 matchmaker. Got a protoss opponent (I play zerg), we attacked each other about the same time, but my mutalisks wrecked his Nexus much faster than his giant mecha things could tear through my defenses. Goddamn.  :drill:

Question: anyone know the trick to changing the full screen resolution? Mine defaults to 800x600, and playing in windowed mode removes the ability to scroll with the mouse.

escape -> options? You could do it from the login screen (I think) or the battle.net screen too (I'm sure).

I'm playing at "full screen windowed", and don't have any problems with scrolling. Makes alt-tabing much easier though.

I'll clarify the problem: when I go into the options menu, clicking the Resolution box does nothing. No list appears, etc. When I change to Fullscreen or Fullscreen (Windowed), the game doesn't take up the whole screen, only the left two thirds or so. Which I suppose is more playable than 800x640 or whatever the low default is, but still annoying.

Drag the corner of the window and it scales up resolution, and works  :drill:

Seems like the game thinks is in window mode all the time if you have no resolution option.

Hmm, trying that gets it resized and all, but then my mouse positioning seems off, by a lot. :uhrr: Resizing it by hand, then switching to Windowed (Fullscreen) seems to have fixed it. Gonna play a game and see.

Edit: Nope, that cuts off an inch or so from the bottom of the screen.

Pre-Ordering from almost anywhere nets you a beta code - Amazon, Gamestop, EBgames, etc.

Seems as good a time as any to pre-order then since I would eventually anyways.

So are they still going forward with the whole "You have to buy this 3 times to get the whole game" shtick?   If so, what's the "Sons of Liberty" edition?

I believe its the single player campaigns that are per-game - Sons of Liberty is the Terran one. You get all the multiplayer regardless.

There is 99.99999% chance that the expansions will introduce multiplayer changes that you can only see and/or use if you buy the expansions.

That is a very sturdy limb I'm going out on.

That would seem to run counter to their e-sport aspirations, but I guess you never know.

They did this for Brood War and Frozen Throne.

Gotcha. What I more meant was, you don't have to buy all 3 boxes to play all 3 sides in multiplayer, or whatever. I wasn't thinking of them as expansions but I guess that's what they are, really; stand-alone expansions.

The have confirmed that there will be new units for every race for each "expansion pack" / game / whatever they want to call it.

PreOrder time.  I assume it's only online preordering?  I can't go to Gamestop near work and do this right? (Was going there anyway.)

Single player info (http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/04/starcraft-2.ars)

I'm torn on that info.  On the one side, it'll probably make the single player a better single player game, but its going to divorce it even further from the multiplayer game. 

I'm delighted.  The multiplayer is good for awhile, but all the mods that came out for Warcraft 3 held my attention for much longer.  I have high hopes for someone doing something interesting in terms of a hero-based coop.  It's almost a done-deal that there will be some sort of tower defense.

I've never been able to get into the gimmicky games that come out of RTS modding to be honest.   I've never been real good at the "real" games either, but I enjoy at least trying most of the time, though I often get frustrated and quit for a month before trying my hand at it again.    The editor for SC2 looks like a lot more than we've ever seen in an RTS editor though, so there is a good possibility of some great stuff coming out of it.

In an article I read about the single player they basically did just straight up say "We had lots of fun ideas that we could never put in multiplayer because they aren't balancable, but we can make the player have pretty much anything in single player and it doesn't matter."   It almost acknowledges that they know the multiplayer isn't fun for most people, but they have to do it to appease the esporters. 

In any event, I guess I'd rather see missions that have me, for instance, doing a thor-dropship harass or something that is both fun and rewarding AND teaches me a good skill for multiplayer than get to use medics and goliaths (units that aren't even in multiplayer) to protect SCVs that are doing something they'd never do in multiplayer

My understanding is that they are trying to provide tutorial missions for the multiplayer game - which would amount to you playing against the computer with the multiplayer setup.  If the computer does a decent job of simulating some sort of human player, I think that is a much better choice then limiting themselves to a "vanilla" setup in single player.

It seems like their philosophies ran parallel to yours (single player is training for multiplayer) for all the previous releases of the game, but they ended up leaving a lot of interesting ideas on the floor because they didn't fit into multiplayer.  I like the philosophy of this better - an "as balanced as we can make it" multiplayer and a single player game that has interesting/special units and a lot of surprises.

It'll probably end up being a better single player game because of it, I just think that in the end they are going to end up alienating people from multiplayer when they come to find out it isn't really the same game they just played through.  Granted, its entirely possible that they think they are basically two entirely different audiences, which they  might be.  The people casual enough to not know what multiplayer is going to be like probably don't care that much if they don't like it, is what I mean to say.

Yeah but it sounds like they are preparing challenge missions as well, which are meant to ease the player to get ready for multiplayer. 

I'm thrilled at them saying they won't be axing ideas, levels or characters because they won't fit with multiplayer style balance. I'd hope that a fair bit of single player acts as training for multiplayer in terms of general gameplay and maybe throws in a few levels that are close to multiplayer v. computer but frankly a series of vanilla starcraft II matches with cutscenes would be shitty, shitty shitty for singleplayer considering the amount of time they've had to develop the game. People playing the two things, at least with RTSes are looking for two different experiences. I don't expect two radically different games but it's nice that they recognise that balance isn't really a crucial feature of single player.

I stopped by Gamestop and used an old preorder credit and got a key! 

Downloading now.  I'm so terrible at RTS's but this should be interesting.

I am trias.funkychicken.

I've watched a ton of games on youtube prior to getting my key, so I'm totally leet.  (not really)

That single-player stuff sounds fantastic.

Haven't gotten my key from pre-ordering online 2 days ago yet, but it says it may take up to 5 so I guess I can't complain really yet.  :oh_i_see:

Ok I'm pretty dumb.  I acknowledge that.  But I can't seem to build an Armory or Factory.  Not sure why.  I've got command centers, barracks, engineering labs and all the upgrades but the option for Factory isn't opening up.  Why am I dumb?

Oh nevermind.  There is an "advanced building" tab.  Fuck me.

'V'

I'm having so much fun playing this game.  squeeee!

Go tell your friends.

First long but very fun game I've had.  I screw up so badly at getting my units into control groups/forgetting about them, but luckily for me 2/2 upgraded roaches + mutas are really good.

http://www.sc2rc.com/index.php/replay/show/2334

Nerf Ultralisks? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wucEINuw5gg)  :grin:

Except that they'll almost certainly die getting in range of anything but zerglings or Zealots, or get so beat up that you won't get your money's worth.  They aren't bad, but they are largely useless most of the time.

Ultras are pretty much the worst unit in the game right now. The fact that they have armor is negated by the number of popular units that do + damage to armor, and the fact that they do splash damage is negated by the them being too fat to get more than a couple attacking at the same time.

"multiple levels of AI and co-op versus the computer"

yay. Didn't apply for beta because I'm not interested in PvP but I loved this aspect of SC1. 4 friends and an AI that could put up a decent fight led to some epic sessions. And that's also where you can play around with multiplayer and learn the ropes. Separating the single player off so it can be a real game in its own right is a great call.

Quick note, online ordering with Gamestop has a coupon code 25OFF to cut 25% off an order of $100 or more.  Since the collector SC2 is 99, you need to stick something else in to make the code work, but it's a pretty good deal.  They shipped me a beta code not too long after I ordered, my user name's kitsune.ichiban.

Does anyone else have performance issues since patch 9/10? Initially the game had detected me at high, and I had no problems at 2v2 full control vs full control. Since the patch it stutters when 6 zerglings come out of their eggs at the same time. I had to bump it down to medium and it looks awful :(


re-ultras: I read a nice suggestion on TL, that they should make them step over units like colossus. Bump up price and/or build time for balance - voila. They're unusable as it is :(

While we're on the subject, turn off banelings collision detection for allied units when they're off to explode!!!

I had bad perf issues with patch 9, haven't played since then. Just selecting my drones at the start of the game for initial mining was laggy and awful. Other people have reported the same, looks like they screwed something up.

I reinstalled the beta just to try out the editor (which i like, but am not great with yet), and decided to play some ladder placement matches and somehow ended up in Gold league.  This is going to be ugly.

I lost a placement match and got placed in gold, was pretty comfortable for a bit before getting bumped to platinum :( lose fest comenced shortly after :( I wsih I could force it so it would just match me at the upper gold low plat, that seems to be the spot I'm most comfortable. I'll just get super frustrated before I lose enough games to get matched within my braket.

So I tried once to rush to Thors and I won against protoss and it was awesome.  Then I tried it again and I don't know how the guy did it, but he had a ton more guys than I did. 

I'm slightly better than terrible at this game.

Been playing some 2v2 with bhodi.  We have a pretty nasty reaper+speedling early game harass that seems very tough to stop.  Unfortunately, if that fails, I suck at the middle game quite badly ><

Fortunately, it's rarely stopped! :)

But no, it's seriously ugly - I can micro the reapers against zerglings/zealots without losses and anything that's a danger to me (stalkers, marines, queen) die under the zergling onslaught. The zerglings are a terrific screen.

10 rax
10 ref
move 2 scvs when ref finishes
11 depot with the rax scv
11 tech lab
11 orbital
11 reaper

It's a killer opening. Build another rax while the reaper builds, send the reaper away and rally both barracks. Send a scv to build a depot, then a refinery, build the 2nd tech lab when possible and you can pump reapers and scvs for a while without needing to do anything heavy in your base. Econ isn't completely gimped since you get the orbital early, use the mule.

I can give you an awesome 2v2 zergling build that beatufully transitions into mid-game :)

14 Pool
14 Extractor
15 Overlord
when pool pops, start pumping zerglings and a queen right away.
at 100 gas, start speed and pull drones off gas
right as queen is popping, you should have 300minerals for a second hatch - put it down at your natural
just continue pumping zerglings and don't miss vomits - you have enough income to continuously pump zerglings from the vomited main hatch and the secondary at the expansion with some left over (if you're fighting a lot and don't have to pump overlords, you should have enough for a second queen at the hatch).

Early game this build DESTROYS a zerg going Roach, especialy with some terran help.

As soon as you're done pushing (make sure you don't lose your zerglings, they're amazing for map control) you instantly pop something like 10 drones, go back to mining gas and you're incredibly strong for the mid-game with an expansion running right away. You have to be careful about one base air harass, but if you've pushed hard enough the other team is probably about as developed as you are just from one base.

From there you have two options for midgame - mass mutas, or roach/hydra with upgrades. I prefer the second, especially with a terran that can take care of pesky colossus :)

ps: don't miss vomits! the hotkey is V now  :awesome_for_real:
pss: don't go zerglings against terran/toss or terran/terran; toss/toss is fine, zerg/anything is perfect :)

Um, this might be a noob question but, what do the numbers mean before the buildings?

Harvester count, if I'm not mistaken.

I don't understand a word of this but can at least appreciate the remarkable diversity of our people when I see that it makes sense to someone.

Ahh ok; so "14 Pool" means make a Spawning Pool with your 14th drone, and so on?

Yup.

You know that someone, somewhere, reads 14 pool and spawns fourteen spawning pools.  :awesome_for_real:

*goes to find the youtube video*

How about http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-XXF2ypoVA :P

At last - Thrawn.thrawn

Yeah, that would undoubtedly transition better to mid game than what I've been doing.  I've been going 10 overpool, as I can get 6 zerglings out right around the same time he gets his first reaper, but admittedly this does hurt the economy somewhat.  But its so absurdly strong in that first few minutes that it might be worth it, at least considering our win rate at that point.

And against terran...well, just make banelings and speedlings!  Zerglings forever!

I thought that the numbers would be supply count, which is effectively the same thing early game I suppose...

It does mean supply count, which is subtly different. (By the way am I the only one who HATES it when people call supply 'food'?) For example you might see something like this:

10 Overlord
13 Spawning Pool
12 Extractor

In this case the extractor is morphed by the 14th drone produced, but the supply is only 12 as the 13th guy became a pool and was not replaced before the extractor went up.

2v2 I use a very similar build, although I usually 13 pool and get a second hatch a tad later.

Anywhere else to dl the beta from apart from blizzard downloader? It's massively slow...

There's actually no other place on the internet that has it. Looks like you're out of luck.

You can download torrents of it if you like.

I have a key to give away, first person to post here gets it (that is a member with posts)

did you guys see this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFbFCTziw28)? Made with the map editor.

re-zerglings: Trias, if you start with 10 pool and 6 zerglings you're missing a queen, aren't you? While Bhodi is still getting his orbital command and catching up rather quick. If you don't kill or do terrible, terrible damage you're basically done right there.

btw - beta with pre-order is all but confirmed for Europe at this point. Starting at some point next week. There are whispers about a July release (previously slated for Q2)

Key please!  :awesome_for_real:

Damn, heh.

Didn't know the count referred to supply, but it makes more sense. Never was much of one for the in-depth SC play/jargon, but with the brackets and such and how the map editor looks, this is pretty much a guaranteed buy for me when it comes out.

Starcraft is actually pretty light on jargon and a lot of it is just obvious shorthand like hatch = hatchery and rax = barracks. Especially compared to fighting games which are ridiculous in that respect.

Just realised that if I turn off peer-to-peer the download goes lightyears faster. Thought I'd share that for anyone else dumb like me.

Can't wait to play some games! 30min!

Oh and I'm lamaros.lamaros, do say hello!

Bah, I never get into betas.  This is starting to look really interesting from the conversations here and oddly from the YouTube videos of tournament games.  Just strange considering Starcraft is what got me to stop playing competitive RTS (ladder matches were ass) and almost RTS altogether.

I get 6 zerglings out right when the spawning pool is built, then a queen about 15 seconds later.  Considering I still end up getting my queen before a 13 or 14 pool does (at least I believe), I don't think that's a big deal.  Let me link a replay.  It's certainly not an 'all-in' strategy.

What is a problem with that build is that I have no idea when I should expand, or pump drones really.  I need a plan!

Grr, cant attach .replay files in f13.  Bhodi, is it cool if I upload one of our games to sc2rc.com?

you can put it on rapidshare or whatever :)

DO EET I have 1 hour to kill at work, this will be a distraction :P

sc2rc.com is meant to be used by all. It isn't a SA-only thing. It might be sorta-broke with the new patch, though.

Yeah, feel free to upload your replays if you are looking for build feedback. Wolf is good, I'm pretty decent, I'm sure we have some other "plat level" people around.

Ok, here ya go.  http://www.sc2rc.com/index.php/replay/show/2596 (http://www.sc2rc.com/index.php/replay/show/2596)

Having 10 larva and 900 minerals in the bank ftw!

 :ye_gods:  Micro+Macro is HARD IMO.

Yes it is.  Hot keys are your friend,

I've had pretty good luck opening up with a 2-3 drop ship filled with marines rush onto their workers.  I just won 4 out of 5 games with that!  The losing game was against the only Zerg player, who had a bunch of Muta's out already when I came flying in...

"pro"-tip just make sure you have all your hatcheries hotkeyed at 4, 5 and 6 and just smash the middle of the keyboard during fight to produce stuff :)

Watched the rep - so basically you get your set of 6 at around the 3 minute mark and your attack starts at about the 4 minute mark. At that time my build has 6 lings and a Queen, plus 4 producing, larvae on their way and 15 workers. Your speed comes a bit late too (5:50), mine came at 5:21 with 20 lings (I generally try not to attack without speed). At this point you have map control vs any match up ('cept possibly mass zealots/MM, but like I said I really don't like lings vs PT).  Here's the rapidshit link - http://rapidshare.com/files/381219931/build.SC2Replay.html

Yay time to go home :D HDH is live in an hour (TLO FIGHTING~~) and later Nazgul vs WhiteRa for the razer thing :)

I play as Random, but when I am playing zerg i tend to just hotkey all my hatcheries onto the same hotkey.

Cool, thanks for the insight!  I figured that if I waited for a 14 pool I wouldn't get my lings out in time to go with his first reaper, but if thats not the case then 14 pool is definitely superior.  

I always hotkey my first hatchery...do I actually use this hotkey?  Usually not, lol.  I seriously need a timer every 40 seconds to go off that screams at me 'MACRO NOW'.  And remembering to hotkey my second or this hatcheries seems beyond me at this point.  I am seriously in a constant state of panic in thiis game.  It's a relief when the game is over.

I'll actually be watching the HDH as well!  Hopefully they will not have such terrible stream issues as the first time.

No you get your first set faster. Like 1 min, but it's very slow after that and doesn't have a good transition (basically too rushy).

Hatcheries - I meant all to multiple hotkeys so you don't have to aim :)

I'm actually random too but zergs my strongest race by far.

I random but my protoss is strongest. Zerg is weakest by far; I fall behind on the vomit and can't use two or three at once to make up the time like I can with the other races. It's all relative, of course.


Small thing trias; I think I've said it before but lings/marines/zealots do NOT counter reapers. Queen/marauder/stalker is the counter so just make sure you get that queen out and you'll be fine.

My hotkeys:

1 Ground army
2 Air/harass army
3 Casters
4 CC/Lair/Nexus
5 Barrack/Gateway/non-queen'd hatchery (useless now that you can't vomit on portraits)
6 factory/robo
7 starport/stargate

Yes, you should use them. If you haven't seen there was a really interesting interview when day9 and a TL guy visited the blizzard offices. They talked about the single player and the efforts they are making to transition people into multiplayer. Check it out (http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=121072):


So basically, the challenge mode trains you in the fundamentals of online play - that is, macro and micro individually, the macro/micro balance, hotkeys, and early game rush/econ management.

Wolf: TLO is my hero, but the two matches I'm looking forward to are idra vs orb (ragequit / manbaby blame) and day9 vs tasteless (family feud). Day9 is so awesome, and I hope he'll analyze the replays during a D9D because the commentators are so horrible. They're blabbing looking at some army and the minimap is exploding, or they miss some crucial bit of info or are blatantly wrong so often that I'm just wanting to mouse over and move the damn screen myself while watching the HDH replays.

FPS made with the starcraft map editor (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INWM321VovM). The crazyness people will create with this thing...

Well, I'm playing now.  Had fun in 2 lame practice matches (won v. some people that didn't know up from down).  I don't think I've played any multiplayer RTS since some AoK with friends long, long ago.  I have no chops, but at least I'm learning the hotkeys.  :awesome_for_real:

Rasix.rasix

Pretty much all our new PC games will in actuality be SC2 mods.

This game yet again proves to me that I'm not 'cut out' for RTS games. I gave it a shot, and somehow the idea of perfect build orders, queueing up and controlling multiple units, and knowing the counters to everything isn't fun.  :oh_i_see:

Just got placed in silver 2v2. Would've rather been in bronze  :awesome_for_real:

I'm neth.nethalas. Starting to add people. How many Europeans have we got playing?

Argh, fuck getting cannon rushed.

i'm eu - wolf.iclan

Same, I finished my 2v2 matches first but almost all of my games I had either a REALLY bad opponent or two or a really strong partner that owned the game.   So I'm worried I got placed higher then I should of been.

Haha, yeah, I went through my 5 1v1 games, and only lost once.  I would just keep doing the drop marine strategy, and destroy people.  Or my opponents were really bad, and would just be doing something completely retarded.  So then suddenly it placed me in silver bracket.  Keep in mind that before this, I've pretty much never played any SC (either game) online before.  

Suddenly I run into a wall of ass raping.   :awesome_for_real:

At least the threshold you cross to ass-raping is visible. Sounds like when I get to a certain level in League of Legends, whatever that is, I will not have the lube on hand for the amount of ass-rape I'll be getting.

That's why it's good to be like me and get your ass kicked during the placement games.  I'm having a hard time countering terrans that go with cloaking or dropship shenanigans.   

I've pretty much mauled every zerg and protoss player I've encountered except for my first game as zerg when I didn't know how to do anything.  :awesome_for_real:  I'm really bad with zerg, it makes me want to stop playing random.  They're just so much different than terran/protoss.

I cannot seem to win against the damn zerg.  They can just build shit so much faster.  One game I was playing against Zerg, so I basically started pumping out Marines as fast as I could (like seriously, not sure how it could have gone faster, I had double production going), with the choke point to my base sealed off.  He still managed to bring a rush of roaches at me that managed to blow through the barrier while under fire, and kill all my marines.  Then had enough left over to go maul all my SUV's.  Guess I should rush hellions or something?

Man, people are starting to get paranoid about the drop ship strategy though.  I went to go do it and one guy had spent a shit ton of money putting missile batteries all around his mineral field.

WTF I think I'm doomed, I got put in Gold 1v1 rank 65.  :ye_gods:  I haven't played more then a dozen Starcraft games in like years and never played it seriously enough to get really good at it.  Ahhhhhhh....

Marauders are key against roaches.  If he's massing roaches and you're massing marines, you're pretty much screwed unless you can kite with stim.

On the plus side, as far as I can tell the ladder ranking does a pretty good job of adjusting you.  I went like 10-2 over my first few games and was #1 in my gold division.  Then, I started going up against platinum players constantly and getting my ass handed to me.  Ended up at like 19-23.  Now, I'm back playing gold players again and I've worked it up to 37-33.

As was mentioned, Marauders destroy roaches and are pretty good against most things once you get concussive shells upgrade at the tech lab.

Also if by "double production" you mean 2 barracks that really isn't all that much, if you are going for a mostly infantry army I'd have 2 rax with tech labs and one rax with reactor for marines pretty early.

I've got a pretty good cheese/all in TvZ. I Just go one base 4 rax pure marauder with a timing push at about the time the stim finishes. I've yet to lose with that :)

Er, how does that not lose to two-hatch speedling?

people hate to scout? :)

everyone's expecting some sort of helion harass, so they go roaches and skip speed :)

Are they still issuing friend keys to existing accounts?

So, you just build 4 barracks as fast as you can, then start pumping out marauder's until you get the stimpack upgrade, then go?

Yep. Just got two EU keys. I've hooked up all my friends, anyone interested?

Teleku - Basically yeah, it's pretty all in, you're dead if you don't make it.

Hell, I could use a key.  :awesome_for_real:

Ditto.

I'd love a key if there's still one going  :awesome_for_real:

But they are pissing off their fanbase in certain ways. The changes Blizzard has made to game mechanics is akin to the changes observed when playing Super Smash Bros Brawl in comparison to Melee or Street Fighter Alpha compared to Turbo.

The level of control needed to do complex tasks has been smoothed out so lesser dexterous players can perform them just like the transition from Melee to Brawl. Also various game design flaws from SC1 were removed from SC2 and it was these flaws that created new levels of skill like you would get in Turbo unlike Alpha.

These points are relevant because these game mechanics gave a person a deeper avenue of refining their skill sets but I find it troublesome that they think even though the gap has been lowered obvious skill gaps don't exist. Otherwise we wouldn't be seeing the same group of people in the various beta tournaments (ignoring the inherent bias of certain invitationals)

all out :( The friend thing is going around though, I'm sure more will pop up

Good analysis of this:

http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=121769

From the article:




Am I crazy for thinking that yes, yes your strategy should outweigh your ability to dance 6 muta's?


I understand the desire for super micro control from these top players, but sometimes I think they would be at their happiest just having 10vs10 Drone matches, the best micro'er wins it all!

That piece is retarded and is just an illustration of the phenomenon where the more you like a game the more likely you are to dislike the sequel.

Starcraft 2 has some problems but "not similar enough to Starcraft" is not one of them, if anything the game is way too similar to Starcraft.

I think the distinction that is lacking, generally, is that pro starcraft players are generally not RTS fans, they are Starcraft 1 fans.  To them, it isn't about playing a strategy game, its about playing Starcraft, and right now playing starcraft means all those micro mechanics in SC1.  Remember, its like a sport to these people, so imagine if the NBA decided they were going to release NBA 2 next season, and they were going to lower the hoop to 8 feet to make the game more playable by amateurs.  You can imagine there would probably be some backlash among the NBA players.

So de-emphasizing the importance of tactics is a good thing in a strategy game?

Maybe it is but its a risk to change up the Starcraft style of strategy gaming and not just use these types of changes in another RTS brand.

Stop being stupid.

Instead of a pointless attack offer an objective point worth thinking about.

I think it can be a good thing, sure. Not every strategy game needs to have the same emphasis on every facet - in fact I would argue it is a much much better thing for gamers to have a range of styles to pick from. This one may not be your bag, but there are other choices.

guys come on, that "artcile" is written by some random dude over at TL. Of course there will be people that feel butthurt. The important thing is that EVERY SINGLE PRO out there has shrugged off their concerns from the beginning of beta and is now 100% behind SC2. TL is full with people going back on their intial statment saying that SC2 skill cap is very, very high and that there's plenty of micro to go around. They even like smart casting, I think I read a post by Nony saying that he likes it because he can focus more on other micro stuff rather than managing his templars.

This is a LOT of downloading.

Almost there.

 :heartbreak:

I got about half-way through that monstrosity before giving up. I'm sure he probably had a nice thought in there (somewhere) but it was drowned out by the rising tide on nonsensical whining. To be honest, i couldn't even tell what he was whining about apart from "bawwwwwwww some d+ scub beat me it's impossible!!!11".

If you had watched pretty much any of the top videos you would know that, "No micro" is not a fault of SC2.  The one a couple of pages back where the Protoss player, though outnumbered 5:1 in resource nodes, held off the Zerg at a choke point with stupid sick micro for 20 minutes is a good example.

Hence, it's a stupid discussion.

Except that isn't true. From that very same thread.

InControl

ret

Even when there is a disagreement there is some acknowledgment the post isn't unfounded.

NonY

And he elaborates a little further.


So obviously pros are aware of the changes and either don't care or don't like it.


That's less about micro and more about map positioning and keeping up macro to ensure he didn't die out right.

Regardless I wasn't making an extreme point that micro was removed but that the subtle changes to aspects of the game like moving shot aren't irrelevant. Blizzard has removed the ability to use a different skill set to play the game that existed in the predecessor.

No worries, thanks anyhow.  :grin:

Where's the white replays at ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vpuv7VPb2rA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-XXF2ypoVA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUxF4XWtj4g



"Real" matches:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91XjX59O-VQ

Day9's shit which is awesome watch it:
http://www.livestream.com/striderdoom

That is sick, seriously.

Whatever, SC2 clearly takes no skill.  :oh_i_see:

Dancing Mutalisks is not a tactic worth encouraging, don't be stupid.

So you gave quotes by InControl, the Assimilator Hunter and Ret that has hardly played the game. Also Noni that also played a lot less than most and said that post was mostly bullshit.

Fucking Mutalisks.

Where's all the Filthy Euros ?  I demand FRIENDS.   :why_so_serious:

Helm.helm (I think)

I am so bad, I should come around on the other side of good.

Got placed in the copper league for losing all my placement  matches.  :awesome_for_real:

Filthy Euros:

Wolf: wolf.iclan
Mosesandstick: neth.nethalas
Der Helm: helm.helm (he thinks)
Ironwood: ironwood.jones
IainC: iainz0r(at)gmail(dot)com

Silly Americans:

Nonentity: Non.nonentity
Fordel: Fordel.sturmvogel
Ingmar: ingmar.slap
Caladein: Caladein.cal
Vision: Vision.Vison
Quintoon: Quinton.zzz
Bhodi: bhodi.bhodi
Fuser: bin.fuser
Trias_e: trias.funkychicken
Thrawn: Thrawn.thrawn
Rasix: Rasix.rasix
Teleku: Teleku.teleku
EvilElvis: evilelvis.togh

Australians who are lucky enough to play with Americans and not Koreans:

lamaros: lamaros.lamaros

I've missed a few who haven't posted names (Teleku, Margalis)

Someone less lazy than me needs to make a compiled list of everyones SC2 names somewhere.  :awesome_for_real: (Thrawn.thrawn)

Yeah, that was real stupid of me.

I'm Ironwood.Jones

Australian yes, but we play on the US servers.

Helm and I were like the Laurel and Hardy of the SC2 world.

Seriously.  I should upload the replay.

It's that bad.

 :why_so_serious:

I just lost a game where I built nothing but banelings and he built nothing but marines.  FML.

I've been doing comedy 2v2s where I build nothing but infestors. It's pretty great. It works surprisingly well!

I've added you all :)

The good thing about still raiding in WoW - BONUS POINTS!

I've lost 7 games in a row, mostly to all-in tier 1 units, and i cant figure out how to stop it.  Can't scout due to wall off, overlords are too slow early to scout with them.  Sadly because of this I'm way more successful 1 basing zerg at this point than anything else.  : /.  I'm actually quite successful 1 basing though so I guess I'll just go back to that.  I just don't get how early expand is plausible for zerg except on like kulas, metalopolis or lost temple.

FE does not necessarily mean heavy drones. Go for facepokers. Try a 14 hatch 15 pool, and immediately build 2 sunkens at your exp and 2 at your main when your pool pops followed by a bunch of zerglings from both (it will pop at almost the exact same time as your expansion). Make sure to send 2 drones down to build the pokers to save time.

Alternately you can do the TLO FE zerg opening from my link above:

10 overlord
14 hatch
15 pool
15 extractor
16 roach warren  + zerglings

no queens, spawn nothing but zerglings and then roaches.

Basically, if you're going to FE you need to do it pre-pool and fortify with sunkens and focus on unit production instead of drones, even if you have map control, because you never know when those bunkers are going to drop and there are 14 marauders on the other side. You can send lings up 2 by 2 to take a peek if you want to 'scout' since when terran wall in 90% of the time their army is right on the other side.

FE?

Fast expand.

A serious failing (and I do it too) is investing way too much into drones once the FE is successful. Then, 2 minutes later, when you've got an econ advantage but not a unit advantage, he does a timing push with the army that he's spent the last 3 minutes creating while you've been spawning drones. One way I mange this in my head is to build drones at the expansion but units at the main. Or, use the queen larvae for one or the other.

Also, if you successfully expand you need to transition into heavy gas units, either mutas or baneling/infestors, to really take advantage of the double gas.

My favourite was blocking the ramp with my cannons so your Thors could not get past them  :awesome_for_real:

vs. which races btw? I go one base vs Terran always, too hard to stop a Marauder push if you expand, and he isn't anyway. Unless it's Desert Oasis, which is so broken in zerg's favour it's not even funny.

I really want ot try that new Dimaga build out. 2 gas into quick Lair, speedlings to defend, late expand into Muta & Infestor.

Anyway, vs. P it's a free win. 90% of the time he'll zealot sentri push off of 5 wg, with early pressure on your expo if he's smart. Basically 14 pool, 16 hatch, queen straight to expo when she spawns and you're fine. Try to scout with lings, if it doesn't work, suicide ovies to try to scout and get lair ASAP. Next scout is your Overseer, morph him with an ovie close to his base, and just fly around. It's free speed and has changlings you can drop in his base for extra scouting.

If you see 3+ gates, he's pushing you early. Start massing drones, put a roach warren down, and go OVERBOARD on the sunkens. Seriously, 10+, 11+ doesn't matter, as much as it takes to survive. As soon as he starts pushing, start building roaches at your expo, drone at the main  - he'll hax field the ramp, so no point in making units there. If you have enough sunkens, congrats on winning :) If you stop that, push back with roaches, but don't go in and expand again. Move your remaining sunkes into a contain position close to his base and try to get a 4th asap. Get a shitload of roach/hydra while going for hive, greater spire and broodlords.

If you see a stargate he's going void raid, build 2 extra queen, put down hydra den fast, kill him as soon as you stop void rays :)

If you see a robo, laugh at his face, stop his push if he's at one base and expand again. Hydra/roach destroys immortal pushes; Colossus need the upgrade to be viable, and by the time he goes out with 3 you'll have so much stuff he'll cry :)

edit: you guys post too much :( My post was totally relevant when I started it like an hour ago :(

Teleku.teleku is my account name.  Thankfully, I'm so bad I got dropped down to the Bronze level, so now I actually win more often!

I've been having good luck Banshee rushing with Terrans against Protoss.  I don't think I've actually lost yet against a Protoss when I've tried that.  They never rush, so its easier to do.

Burrowing Zerg are bad bastards.

Well, Mine Were.

 :awesome_for_real:

"Ach, here's another fine mess you've gotten us intae".

Nah, I just blew them up.  I like Blawin' things up.

How did you get those Thor's so fast anyway ?  :awesome_for_real:

Thors are actually easy to get that quick.  Alas, it's then you learn that due to the countering strategies required for SC2, you're probably fucked anyway.  It seems to be quantity you want over quality...

On that note, I just played a game where someone used the 'Teleport lots of fucking protoss into your base because you didn't notice the cunting pylon right next to you' strat.  I would imagine this happens a lot and even now you're all screaming 'You Noob'.

Dammit.

DAMMIT.

I haven't had a game last over 10 mins, win or lose.  This game is Nasty, Brutish and Short.

I'm enjoying it quite a bit.

At least from what I've played, people don't use warp prisms that much, I don't think I've seen a single player ('part from meself) use them.

Only Terrans actually use their drop ships to carry troops really.

You might see a Protoss player do something cute like a immortal drop, or maybe protect their Templars from EMP inside the ship, but its just faster to use warpgates and proxy everything in. If the Zerg wants to shift around the map rapidly, they just open up tunnel worms everywhere. I can't remember the last time I saw a zerg player even research their Overlord carry. It's kinda funny, you'll see them fly an Overlord to an island for vision, then they'll spawn the worm at the island and set up the expansion that way.

(http://i440.photobucket.com/albums/qq122/steezymofeezy/Beavis_and_Butthead_horror.png)

I've seen Protoss players using ships to transport troops for harassing but then I'm watching the higher level games that I doubt are anything like most games played.

I didnt follow SC at all, but wasn't the most typical combination the transport + reaver? Colossi partially replace reavers, and they climb cliffs, so transporting them isn't always wanted or necessary.

Handily won my first 5 practice matches; full anticipate having my shit thoroughly pushed in during my first placement game.

evilelvis.tohg

Oh no, people use them. Oh yes, yes, yes we do. Tee-hee.

Aren't you a platinum player or something though?  :grin:

Gold.

I should probably elaborate (since one doesn't have to be high-level to do this), but one of the staples of Protoss dickery for me has been the prism-beacon/warp-gate combo. Park the psi-field over some unnoticed corner of an opponent's base and repeatedly warp in singular dts. Works best on Terran players who don't build sensor towers (or enough turrets), and spam mules nonstop. Which is about 95% of them.

You can also whore warp-prism reinforcements by parking it on the flank of an expected attack route, and making your opponent fight on multiple vectors.

July 27th release.

7/27/10

Release date added.

This makes alot of sense, thanks.  I haven't considered getting the hatch before the pool before, it makes sense as you can get your defense up much quicker.  Previously I was building two sunkens at my main and then moving one down to my expansion when it's done, this probably isn't enough.  However I also am getting quick lair which I feel is essential to counter air, but is a drain on resources and may lead to my death...on this note I always get two queens pretty quick to help survive an initial air rush.  I'm not sure if I'm just a noob or suck at scouting though in that regard.  Well, I know I suck at scouting, and I know I'm a noob, but I don't know which is more to blame for my troubles.

Thanks a ton! Protoss is my my highest win rate, but this will still help immensely.  The only thing that worries me is that it seems like if toss pushes quickly with two immortals, I'm in a really weak position.  I don't have a unit advantage at that point as it's early and I haven't gotten an economy boost, and those immortals rip through sunken coloines super fast.

I also enjoy the dt prism drops. However it's not really efficient play given the costs of getting dts...

Every game I play I get worse.   :heartbreak:

Aw man, with a name like Wings of Liberty, they should have released it on July 4th.   :awesome_for_real:

Ok, I'm going to try to derail this thread a bit and ask for some Tech advice since its mainly effecting my ability to play SC2, which is pissing me off.

My connection speed appears to be very slow the last 3 days.  Internet pages are loading much more sluggishly.  When I try to play Starcraft, I get constant lag, until I just totally lag out and get disconnected.  However, when I go to download anything, I'm getting fast speeds.  Like, I'll be able to download a file at a constant 500 kb/s, but CNN.com takes about 10 seconds to fully load.  Steam seems fine as well, as I'm downloading a game at about 500 kb/s right now (the norm).  I am using wireless.  It's worked pretty well before this.  I secured the router long ago with an actual password (not factory default) and require a key to connect, so I don't think anybody is leaching.  This is happening when other people on the network (housemates) don't even have their computers on, and anyways they are too old to even know how to fucking torrent anything.  I've run some anti virus and it doesn't seem to catch anything.  I'm using Windows 7 pro.  I tried changing the frequency my router transmits on, but that didn't help.

Does anybody have any idea why the fuck this is happening to me?  My only other thought is that Comcast is being a dick to our connection because I was downloading lots of stuff, but I can STILL download things fast, I just can't load pages (or play SC2 apparently) very fast.

Aside from DNS which would cause cnn to load slowly but not cause starcraft lag, It sounds like your modem+router needs a reboot and/or replacement. Try power cycling it first; I don't know how comcast does things but it's possible they've changed around their DNS servers and you need to get the new ones as you're still connecting to the old (and taking a while to timeout). This is only loading stuff, this wouldn't be causing lag mid-game.

Comcast throttling wouldn't cause webpages to load slow. It's either your modem losing the ability to handle lots of sockets or a DNS issue, both hopefully would be resolved with a hard power cycle.

I finally broke down and pre-ordered.  Played my first game 1v1 as terran vs terran and I can say without a doubt I am really bad, I won but it wasn't pretty.  I like reaper harass on scv's though.  Ratadm.ratadm is my name.

Oddly while reading that, my Comcast connection completely bombs out.

I've switched from random to Terran.  I like the Terrans the best and I'm too horrible at this crap to keep playing random.

After losing a match to Zerg where I accidentally left a supply depot down (yah, lol) and got reamed by a bunch of zerglings, I just successfully squashed a few all out zealot pushes.  Mass marauders is a lot of fun, but I really need to start working on some mid game transitioning (I have none).   Right now I just single base without teching at all and either lose to something ridiculous, fuckup my wall-off and get nailed by an early zergling/zealot blitz, or just stomp some clueless noob.

Amazing that I'm having fun with something that I'm so terrible at.

Preordered the Collector Ed.... normally how long does it take for Gamestop to send out the Beta-Key? (If anyone here did preorder from Gamestop)

Thanks in advance...

Take away the word 'singular' and you'd be right.  I had 4 units at a time warping into my base and tearing off my todger.

I won't get fooled again.

I received mine after a few hours.

Ugh, any tips for stopping reapers as protoss? They run circles around zealots, and even if I go aggressive with a gateway on 10, there's always holes somewhere and I can't help but lose drones, only limit the damage.

Heh, you warp them one at a time to bait out scans. If he kills several with one scan it's a loss to you. If he can only kill one per scan however...

If he goes for a cheese extremely early proxy repear rush, you're only chance is an early scout.  If you know its coming, just keep the reapers occupied and save as many drones as you can until you can get a stalker out.    Limiting the damage is all you need to do, an early reaper rush is going to put him at an economic disadvantage, and you can probably get away with an early counter timing attack before he can build up enough defense.  You'll often see an early expansion from a Terran player who went for early reapers in an attempt to make up for it.  Try to take advantage of his lack of a standing army.

tvp at least 90% of terrans will go for reapers, build your stuff close to the nexus and scout with the probe that builds the pylon. If you see rax before supply go for 11 gateway, if you see supply go for regular 13 gate; get gas early, in either case skip zealots entirely and save chrono for your first stalker. The timing is such that he'll be in your base when the stalker pops if you or him don't mess up. One stalker can kill all early reapers.

Like Malakili said, he's realtively behind from this whole affair, so if he doesn't kill any probes you're golden :)

This isn't a strategy game anymore, it's a tactical game.  If you make the wrong decision early, you're pretty much hosed.

And WHERE the fuck did he get that big burny war machine???

I just played the most epic TvT on lost temple. Every time I get tvt on lost temple it turns into some 30 minute crazyness. Noob in action (http://rapidshare.com/files/383560455/Lost_Temple__15_.SC2Replay.html). One of the sickest games I've played.

Someone needs to make a website that renders those replay files into conveniently watchable videos.

StarTube?

Shit. That could be huge.

I thought strategy was the whole bigger picture thing, in terms of scale of the game micro should be tactics and macro should be strategy, which would make SC2 more strategy based than SC.

Finally got it.... roughly more than 30 hours after ordering it. Downloading it at office, but unfortunately its going to be at least 12 hours till I can play it.

Are Euro and US Beta really seperated ? It seems I can't find any of the US f13ers to add as friends. Does that mean I can't play with them either ?

And what about release ?

Q. Will we be able to play with our friends on other continents like we could in StarCraft's Battle.net?

A. Currently we do not have plans to integrate friends between regions for launch. In the long run that's definitely something we'll be looking at.

Taken from http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=23767157319&sid=3000 (http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=23767157319&sid=3000)

Kind of, but there are two very key strategies to keep in mind:

1. Make sure you don't lose to stupid shit

2. Make sure you know what your opponent is up to

My philosophy is that if I'm going to lose it's because my opponent is flat out better, not because they did some proxy or quick teched to air or got a hidden expansion or built all Marauders while I built all Roaches or something like that.

Sorry, my point was that it seems to me that if you make a strategy decision (Rax, Air, Tech, Whatever) it's much much MUCH harder to change it down the line.  The game is so fast paced, chances are you're FUCKED in 2 minutes.  The wrong type of unit fighting the right type of unit just goes DOWN like so much tissue paper.  Sure, those Thors look bigass and nasty, but wee men with blades CUT THEM THE FUCK UP.

I'm not complaining, as such, since I know that I suck, I'm just saying that the 'entry level' is SO MUCH HIGHER here.  I was a good SC player and a FANTASTIC WC3 player, but I'm getting regularly sodomised.

Well I'm not sure that's true. The thing is, and you did mention it in your post, Starcraft is super fast. 2 minutes is an eternity. The real deal is that the hard to counter things are something like 2-3 for each match up, and once you get the timing down you know how/when to check if someone is going for one of those. Also there are a lot of tiny little clues early on - does he have 2 gas or 1 gas, does he have 2 gateways or one, when did he get his cyber core, did he get a reactor or a tech lab, did he expand or is he staying at one base. Scouting is probably the most important skill in this game. There are very little things in the game right now that are pretty tough to counter and of those I think only one is broken (void ray vs terran). But you have to be on your toes, and you need some experience to be able to "sense" when someone is going for something weird. The only way to know a strat is to lose to it :)

wee men with blades cut thors up, but put a couple of cheap buggies in the front and the wee men are fucked.

I get that.  It's kinda my point.  Very steep learning curve on the multiplayer.

Is there an easy mode or can you slow the game down?  I've been away from RTS's for a long time and need to get back 'in shape'.

Not as far as I'm aware, but one of my opponants last night assured me that you can 'Lern2playnoob'.

So that's nice.

 :heartbreak:

the strange thing is I've had a pretty good experience as far as douchebags are concerned. Most people are being very nice, with the ocasional kid mixed in.

Bowder said the full game will have these "Challanges", a set of UMS maps that will show you counters, make you micro, etc. Get you back in shape if you will.

Me too.  It's entirely possible that this guy was merely jesting.  I'd just had around 4 HARD OWNINGS though, so maybe I was oversensitive.

Just from my own  experiences in other RTS betas - the beta community tends to be pretty civil as these things go.  It's not until it hits the mouthbreathing masses that you get the fucktards. 

Well anyone with a preorder can access the beta.

It's a steep curve, but it seems as if it levels off quickly (or gets less steep...) once you've attained a certain level of competency.

I think I started off 10-17, gone for 6 wins in my last 7   :awesome_for_real:
I play 2v2 so there's always that element of luck as well.

Btw, Immortals+Sentry Support goes really well against roaches and hydralisks. They just don't die.

umm.. no, unless you have a siginficant food or positional advantage. A smart zerg won't engage in a choke and will have a good arc against your army destroying it with a significant number of units left. A smarter zerg will have at least a couple of infestors and mind control some of your immortals. You want colossus vs roach/hydra composition. And storm later on for the big battles.

Ugh sorry, I didn't mean as a whole army composition. I meant as damage absorbers.

 :heartbreak:

Do we have our best minds working on this because it seems like somehow there could be moneyvisors involved at a minimum.

To have it done well and not run the risk of being shut down for copyright infringement it would probably need to be done by Blizzard. 

But if you ignore the copyright issues it could be done pretty easily with a GUI test harness to drive the game menus and fraps to record the video.  Does the replay thingy have an "auto director" mode that tries to follow the action?  If not it gets trickier to produce a useful video -- you'd either need to do some screen-scrubbing to try to implement that yourself, or make multiple recordings from multiple angles and composite them.

You can set it to follow either players cam, but there isn't anything like an auto director that I know of that would cover everything.

I'd wager it would be impractical to even attempt to have a smart director type follow cam anyhow. You really seem to need someone like Day9 who knows StarCraft really well to follow the real action.

If they tried to make a cam to "follow the action" I'm sure what would end up happening is it would be flying to drones scouting taking a pot shot at each other while  something actually relevant was going on elsewhere. The replay feature for SC2 is fairly advanced however, so I guess it isn't entirely out of the question that someone could come up with at least a half decent replay culling mechanic.

Reminds me of CoH replay tools. Where you can follow every action and click and even display statistics like how many actions a player took in the entire match.

For some of the really high level replays, you need a Picture in Picture box to really follow everything. It's pretty crazy at how much stuff goes on in some of those games.

 :sad:

I think it's just most people at our level tend to have one plan (mass something) and stick with it. They also tend to not scout thoroughly, often giving time for a transition to a counter unit.

Following either player's camera would be adequate.  Do one recording from each perspective and combine them into one side-by-side view.  Or store each video separately and have the website give you a checklist of perspectives that you can have on screen when you watch the replay (you could also include spectators, I assume).

Nightmare mode: do a recording from each chunk of the map and composite them all together into one giant video that you can scroll around.   :why_so_serious:

My level is defined as:

1.  If someone counters, I'm likely dead.
2.  If someone does something crazy, I'm dead.
3.  If the game goes beyond the initial push/counter push, I'm dead.  Although, this is kind of unproven.  I've only recently had two "long" games.  One TvT and one TvZ.  First one went 25 minutes and he finally just wiped me out with a huge marauder swarm backed by vikings to take out my banshees.  Guy had a really tough turtle.  Second one (21 minutes) was a bit better for me with a guy that managed to mass so many roaches that he overwhelmed my marauder/marine force.  He did some crazy crap like overlord dropping a ton of roaches behind my line.  So I just picked up my buildings, moved out my army, and traded bases.  When retried to rebuild, I landed a barracks right outside his base and actually managed to get up a techlab and a bunch of marauders out while playing hide and go seek with my base avoiding a band of traveling roaches.  Guy was kicking my ass ecnomically, I'm just glad he didn't seem to know anything other than MOAR ROACHZ.
4.  If you tech intelligently and have varried army comp, I'm dead.

I'm just now starting to actually counter.  Problem is I still don't know what a lot of shit actually does.  I still have problems with the tech trees.  :awesome_for_real:

Yea, you can follow the cam of anyone who was in the actual game, player, spectator, ref, whoever.

This is a game where it's difficult to actually improve in skill since it requires peak mental and physical faculty at *all times* to be able to be good.

You don't launch a game and expect it to be a casual affair or have any moment where there's downtime.

Kiting zealots with reavers is hilarious.  I killed like 8-10 zealots and half the dudes drones before he was finally got out ranged stuff to deal with them.

I'm not sure how that follows from your premise.  Example "Basketball is a game where it's difficult to actually improve in skill since it requires peak mental and physical faculty at all times to be able to be good" doesn't make much sense to me, and either does this.  Of course you can improve by playing more, practicing, and watching replays (aka  "film") just like any other 'sport'

I spent the entire night last night watching high level replays.

I don't think I'm ever going to have a chance in this game.   :awesome_for_real:

Some of the shit they pull off is utterly mental and it's SO fast paced it makes my head spin.

This is why I think SC2 really does have a solid chance at becoming an e-sport in the U.S., if Blizzard pushes it that route.  The game is fun to play for us mortals, sure.  But it also gives us the knowledge necessary to appreciate just how good some people can be at this game, and how absurd it is.  At this point it can be more fun to watch these freaks of gaming nature play.  I know I get more enjoyment from watching than playing in many situations in my life.  Basically any time I'm stressed, any time my attention can't be fully on the game, anytime I just need a break.  As a poker player and a student I'm already mentally taxed enough in practically everything I do so playing SC2 on top of that can just be too much sometimes.

On that note, Razer 3rd 4th and Finals tomorrow evening:

Nazgul - Strelok: 20:30 CEST
Dimaga - DeMuslim: 22:30 CEST

bo5 both, live on glhf.tv; hope gunrunn's computer stoped exploding or I'll have to watch the russian stream again.

HDH ro8 live this weekend, on youtube some time later:

Friday, May 7th @ 1PM PST.
Saturday, May 8th @ 1PM PST.

And TLi 2 (US servers edition) on Saturday - 7PM CEST/2PM EST more info and participants: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=123634

MLG did their showmatch thingie yesterday, it should be popping up on youtube shortly.

Also gosucouching's showmatch is scheduled for some time this weekend. It's DeMuslim vs Slush; Demu will probably destroy him but... well EURO SUPERIOR.

YAY STARCRAFT WEEKEND.

You have never played sports have you.  No major sport requires that you have to take time off during a basketball game (while on the court not to mention off it) same goes for all the other major sports and most minor ones.  Sprinting is another example of what he's rightly talking about.  Starcraft, and really all RTS's are like sprints.  You can't casually get good at sprinting you can casually improve your jump shot by just taking a bunch of balls and firing up lazy jumpers by yourself.

Actually, yes I did play sports, at least until the end of high school.   You can EASILY get better at sprinting  "castually" if by casually you mean not doing it all the time.  Practice a little bit a few times a week and you'll be better at sprinting at the end of the month.  You won't be AS BETTER as if you had practiced every day and you might not be "good" at it, but there is still plenty of room to improve.   Or are you just saying you can't get better at sprinting if you don't sprint? Yeah, you're not going to get better at sprinting by jogging, or at least not much better, but thats a statement basically devoid of content to begin with.

I find it hard to constantly focus and account for an entire battlefield's worth of data for 20 - 60 minutes. It's very stressful. I imagine it would be similar to any non-hardcore gamer. I can find fault with your basketball example (downtime exists after a shot is made; the encounter is reset; encounters last only a couple minutes at a time) but I know what you meant. Yes, I know it says something about me.

Of course its difficult, I have a lot of problems with it as well.  In fact, I'd go as far as to say that I'm pretty bad at it.  But that doesn't mean its going to be impossible to get better.   If you want to use the sprinting example, you just go as fast as you can for the distance, where fast = play with the best APM you can muster + dealing with the information and distance = length of the game.   You'll get better the more you do it, even if at the beginning you have to walk the last 20 meters.

I was able to pre-order the collector's edition yesterday (no beta keys left though).  I'll probably get my ass handed to me online but I enjoyed the original SC a lot so I'm not too concerned about it.

Awesome, thanks for that mate.

(although watching Strelok play is about as fun as watching paint dry)

The new patch is interesting.  Toss going phoenix makes me cry as zerg.  You just have to bring all your overlords back to your base and have a few spore crawlers at every base.  Mutas are utterly useless against phoenixes now : /

omg, best change EVER:

-To prevent the accidental research of Ventral Sacs when trying to train an Overlord with no Larva available, the hotkey has been changed from V to E.

:)

Here are the full notes:


Short version - Thors got a slight buff to ground attack, slight nerf to air attack (vs. non light) and the ability is researchable now.
Battlecruisders got an across the board buff in build time (first BCs are out 25s earlier now)
Colossus and Phoenix made more microable
Sentry got a nerf, but not enough imo :(
Broodlords got nerfed, Corruptors got a pretty nice buff
Infestors' mind control got a nerf
Ultralisks got a massive buff

Pretty big patch all around

bonus content: Blizzard explaining the reasoning behind changes (http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=24702391969&sid=5000)

Oh, thank god for this.  


Phoenixes didn't just get more microable.  They got kinda absurd.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31kSA0Guqpo&feature=related

On the plus side, Ultras got better, and will get better next patch.

Corrupters new ability is pretty awful but at least they are faster now.

Infestors mind control has to be researched, but on the plus side it can effect air units now.  So yes, you can mind control a mothership.

I need to stop playing today. Or for at least a couple of days. I'm just playing like shit all day, lost 10 won 4 :(

Last game I build up a huge army, and just moved into the opponent high templers in the front... :(

I hate those kind of days.  So brutal but yet I just keep playing and punishing myself.

I can't win TvT. Every single match the person just turtles up and I can't seem to bust it before they've got mass air.  TvP has been interesting thus far as just about every joker is massing nether rays.  Starport + reactor = die asshole.   This also tends to open them up for getting thwacked with a ground force while the vikings and marines are rendering the nether rays ineffective.

Yeah, I'm having a hard time in TvT as well.  Maybe I'll start trying the Turtle strategy myself.  Normally I've just been rush tech'ing something and hitting the enemy with it, which has worked out decently.  But it always falls apart if they turtle heavily.

How is this whole moving and attacking thing done? Constantly moving lots of short distances to active the auto-attack mechanism?

Well what I do in TvT is either go fast thor (kinda wonky and too easy to counter, but ends games fast - you either win or lose), or turtle and go for BCs directly (this was even before patch and has worked great). Basically, get one rax pump some marinies, go fo factory with tech lab (get siege and 4-5 tanks) and a starport with a reactor. Scan often, if he's going for mass viking - keep your tanks and marines close to your worker line; if he's going many rax turtle up, like bunkers and all that jazz; if he's going for thor, get a reactor for your barracks and pump a ton of marines, those counter thor nicely (also try to catch the dropship with your vikings), keep your tanks at your choke, they will destroy a thor ground push. Transition into armory and natural expand, start upgrading air attack, pump vikings and get two more starports with tech labs and start getting BCs from those. Be on the lookout for banshees and get some turrets just in case. Push out at about 6 BCs, get a new expo while doing this. You should have a ton of vikings, the only thing that can counter you is if he has a lot more vikings than you - that's why you're getting upgrades. Dont forget to target vikings when the battle happens, dont A move; shift click through his.

Worked great pre-patch, and now they've nerfed thor AA and buffed BC build time, should work even better. Games are long though.

Day 9's casting the Razer thing:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/day9tv

should be live right about now :)

Some great marauder micro and then the stream died :(

Back up...wow is that perma-forcefield on the ramp incredibly cheesy.

Gotta love strelok just using it to tech up to siege tanks though.  Very well played.

All you have to do is attack move and they'll do it automatically as far as I know.  Pretty crazy how annoying they are against zerg, sniping overlords and kiting mutas.  Fungal Growth is mandatory against them now IMO.

Hmm so if you fly them away they'll sporadically turn around and fire under an attack move?? Or you have to do it sort of side-side?  :headscratch:

Hmm, sounds fun, might give it a try.  Thanks!

Hour long Gay-Ass replay that, frankly, I quite enjoyed.

Click for the GHEY (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1411632/Coalition.SC2Replay).

That ought to be a dropbox link that's downloadable.  Maybe.  Who knows....

If anyone wants to help me, here's the last few games I lost, both were really frustrating.  

http://www.sc2rc.com/index.php/replay/show/4147  ZvP, he goes Zealot->Voidray->DT

http://www.sc2rc.com/index.php/replay/show/4149  ZvT, he goes Reaper->Banshee

You seem to have the same Zerg problem I do;  control and speed.

It seems to be an UTTER ARSE to keep track of the zerg and what you're building and where they're going and what you're doing.  At some points in that first game, you were all over the shop, even building new drones while old drones sat there sipping tea and eating scones on the grand piano.

I find Zerg the hardest.

Then you got Void Ray and Cloak Cheesed.

Void rays are all over the shop at the moment.

TLi 2 Live in an hour on: http://www.djwheat.tv/

Cast by DjWheat and Chill + Day9 Later when he dies (he's actually playing in this one).

Trias:

One very important thing vs Terran - keep an overlord close, in this game - the one that scouted the 12 main - you should've moved it down to the cliffs overlooking his natural. As soon as you get lair, morph that into an overseer and do a fly over his base. They have a ton of HP, are fast can drop a changeling mid flight and you'll have full knowedge of the 9 reapers he was massing. Another thing - as soon as you have some sort of harass - move your drones, don't let them just stand there taking it - better to lose a couple of seconds of mining than all your drones. Other than that it was mostly mechanics mistakes - not setting your rallies as soon as you build the hatchery at the natural (you can do it while it's still morphing). What killed you was that you lost all your mining - income was 200 vs 1000 at this point. He didn't have anything that a billion roaches wouldn't kill. It's a good build - mass roaches with tunneling claws vs mass marauder. video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbtzRf-ucyM&playnext_from=TL&videos=0bQfPyRSozE). Watch the whole series, it's a nice showcase of a macro zerg with FE. Dimaga is using a trickier build vs Terran, that I've found requires insane micro and game sense so I don't suggest it. You can find replays of it here: http://razer.cups.gamesports.net/replays (in 3rd place and finals pack, the finals, as well as the quarter finals vs. a different terran).

vs Protoss - same thing with the overseer. Learn it, love it. Other than that - why didn't you get the expo fast? Did you get scared by the two gate? When you saw the cyber core and forge + 4th pylon that should've been your clue to expand, that would mean not enough zealots to kill it. Don't play 1 base vs 1 base toss - he will kill you in supply (like he did he attacked with like 10 supply over you, you shouldn't be in this position vs toss). Also you didn't move your built sunkens to your natural (block your ramp with roaches so he doesn't move up). After that attack you were so behind, the game was over. A toss that doesn't push you early should be a free win for you - you just drone up and sunken up.

In both reaplays it was bad scouting on your part - try the overseer trick, it should help you a ton.

I wasn't that bad was I Ironwood  :sad:

God No, I just had an Elena emergency.

Sorry !

Haha, hope the little tyke's ok. I actually tried to win anyways, at least I lasted for 15 minutes  :grin:

Lol.  I couldn't have put any better, and even if I don't know what 'eating scones on a grand piano' means, it's still awesome.

Thanks again wolf.  For the links and the advice.

I just need to get that in my head.  Right when the lair pops I need to spawn an overseer and scout.  It just needs to be automatic.

One thing I'm still really bad at is understanding what I'm scouting.  As you pointed out, I got scared off by the two gate, but then I didn't correctly understand that his army was small when I saw those additional buildings.  I understand really basic things, and I understand tech buildings because you can't fucking misunderstand that, but everything in between...I just don't really know what I'm looking at yet.  That will get better over time I think.

The second thing I am utterly atrocious at is reacting to the minimap alerts when my base is under attack.  Bhodi can attest to the fact that I simply don't notice things going on in my base.  It's a fairly regular occurance to look back at my base and see a bunch of units there that I had no idea had been there for 10+ seconds.  I wish I could set the volume of specific warnings...'your base is under attack' would be made 10x louder for me.

Lots of drama regarding Artosis vs Slush in the TLI.

Artosis disconnects with a huge lead, they call it a rematch, and then Slush goes on to win the match and the entire tournament.

Weeee amateur-run beta esports.

Where would I find such replays ?

Think they are all on the Team Liquid forums, or rather will be.
They haven't uploaded all the replays just yet.

I watched up to Slushs match with Louder. Louder is a pretty interesting up and comer. Reminds me of TheLittleOne.

Having a good time with Carriers at the moment.  My protoss and human game is good.

I seem to still utterly blow as Zerg.

Lurker here...

phry.phry if any silly americans wants to play

I'll post the list again in case people are still looking. Welcome Phry!

Filthy Euros:

Wolf: wolf.iclan
Mosesandstick: neth.nethalas
Der Helm: helm.helm
Ironwood: ironwood.jones
IainC: iainz0r(at)gmail(dot)com

Silly Americans:

Nonentity: Non.nonentity
Fordel: Fordel.sturmvogel
Ingmar: ingmar.slap
Caladein: Caladein.cal
Vision: Vision.Vison
Quintoon: Quinton.zzz
Bhodi: bhodi.bhodi
Fuser: bin.fuser
Trias_e: trias.funkychicken
Thrawn: Thrawn.thrawn
Rasix: Rasix.rasix
Teleku: Teleku.teleku
EvilElvis: evilelvis.togh
lamaros: lamaros.lamaros
Phry: phry.phry

Hmm, I went down the list and tried to add all the silly American's, but at least half of them weren't recognized.  What am I doing wrong?  Tried uppercase'ing the first letter on the ID's listed that didn't have it, but no good.

I never got back around to recreating my ID so it probably doesn't exist right now.

They've probably reset the system once (or more) since people put their info in this thread.

The fact that the discussion is centered on technical minutia and there seems to be some diversity in tactics makes it sound like Blizzard got it mostly right again.

I haven't had it glitch on me once yet, I don't think.  The new patch brought an annoying 'won't close after I close' thing in Win7 but I'm sure that's an easy fix.

Once again, Blizzard impress by releasing something really ready to release and keeping it back to get it totally right.

My only criticism here is that, frankly, it's not that much different to Brood war.  I'm going to be interested to see how the Single player brings new stuff to the table because it seems limited.

Gripping hand, I don't mind someone reskinning Starcraft for the new generation and releasing it.  I'd imagine Diablo III will be much the same...

The single player does look pretty good as single player campaigns for RTS games go (despite my hand wringing about it earlier in the thread).   Its interesting because you have the casual players like us saying its basically Starcraft reskinned, while the pro players are saying it deviates too much from what made SC1 great.

My biggest issue so far is the damage v. armored units.  (Roach, Marauder, Stalker/Immortal)  Because these units are so cheap and easy to get and often make up the backbone of any army, armoed units have practically become MORE vulnerable than light units, and certainly more vulnerably by cost.   They've already toned it down more than once because it was getting silly, but I am generally of the opinion that the more units that are viable in a given situation the better, and with the current mechanics, there is often a best unit to have given your opponents army make up. It doesn't sound bad when I say it that way, but I think it makes games, generally, a lot less interesting.  For instance, I was watching a replay the other day where one guy went Mutas, and the other guy went Hydras, and neither really had a huge inkling of what the other guy was teching to, but the guy who went Hydras was just at a huge advantage because Hydras just tear up mutalisks.

In fairness, the same thing happend in WC3 when they introduced the armor types.  It's actually a good mechanic that helps spice up the gameplay.  My problem with it in SC2 I've already mentioned :  the games are so fast paced that the guy who went Muta's game was OVER long before he knew it.

He was never gonna win.  Even if he'd found out after the first engagement, he wouldn't have had TIME to make something else before being, quite literally, zerged.

Yeah, this is a better way of putting it than I did.

I have the worst brain farts in this game.  Here's some of the ways I've managed to lose games recently:

-Managed to make my worker waypoint at the gas.  It doesn't tell you there are idle workers so I didn't notice for like 5 minutes that I had 11 drones going into 1 gas.

-Mishit a key and ruined my hotkeyed army, so I ended up sending some drones out along side my other forces which I didn't notice until they were halfway there.

-Hit the overlord key instead of the zergling key early game.  3 overlords popping out will really help against that early zealot pressure!

-Most recent, in a 2v2 w/ bhodi (sorry again), turning my zerglings into banelings right infront of the opposing force.  I was retardedly desperately spamming the hotkey so they would go up asap (the nest was in the process of building) without paying attention to where my zerglings actually were at the time in terms of the fight.

The nice thing about 1v1 is I can just laugh about how dumb I am, but I feel really bad in 2v2 when I do stupid shit.  Anyways, 2v2 with me at your own risk, I'm probably gonna fuck up really badly in stupid ways often.

"-Managed to make my worker waypoint at the gas.  It doesn't tell you there are idle workers so I didn't notice for like 5 minutes that I had 11 drones going into 1 gas."

I've done that in a custom :) DUDE WTF? WHY DONT I HAVE ANY MINERALS I MADE A MILLION DRONES?

Just got Sentry rushed.

Good God, that took me back.  It's towers all over again.

Two zerg versus two protoss.  Not sure WHAT the fuck we were supposed to do against that...

Reading this this thread has sucked all my interest out of starcraft.

I got an email that said they were giving me an additional key to share with a friend. Funny thing is, I never signed up for the beta, and the email had two keys, although it was written as if there were only one. So, I used one of them on my own battle.net account and have one left to give out if anyone wants. Very odd. It's legit though, SC2 is on my battle.net games page and everything now.

Is there any place to download the client directly? My network blocks torrents, which also kills the Blizzard Downloader.

ME!

Yeah, very much not cool especially for us unobservant types.  Which is me.  Shit I'm busy enough with everything else in the game, I can't be arsed to actually check whether or not my drones are mining.

New one that just happened:  replacing zergling main army group with queen.  queen goes halfway across map, lings all die.  lool.  (sorry bhodi again)

I'm kind of curious as to how this worked, can you link the replay or explain the timing?


Don't let my posts discourage you, most people don't have the problems I have with this game in terms of botched control and awful fuck-ups.  I'm.....special.  That said it is certainly a brutal, fast, and unforgiving game.

Turn off P2P in the Blizzard downloader and it will DL from http.

'ling muta

No, the game itself has nothing to do with my lack of interest.  You guys remember when street fighter was a fun game, when you played with your friends on a weekend?  Now, fast forward to going into an arcade and playing against a guy who knew how to use zangief down to the exact pixel range of every move. 

Starcraft looks like it could be a fun game but the depth to which people in just this thread alone take it, makes me believe I will never enjoy it because I know I am not willing to portion out a sufficient amount of time or brain space to play it on even close to a competitive level.

My fucking friend Jeff.  Fuck Zangief.

Do you not enjoy running because you've watched athletics at the olympics? Not enjoy playing any professional sport with friends, because you know there are professionals who do it better?

Huh? You know you can just play against others like yourself, right?

Consider yourself lucky.  I feel like I'm in some kind of competitive play puragatory, between being bad enough that I just don't care anymore, and caring enough to get real good.  Instead, I'm just totally inconsistent, sometimes I make brilliant plays, and sometimes I get stomped into the ground.  This is much more frustrating than simply getting beaten over and over and over, because now i know I CAN play well, but its supremely frustrating to know that you can play well, but can't play well all the time.

The 2v2 map with the one ramp in.  two protoss drones ran in and put down pylons.  Clearly already having a forge, they then put down Sentry Guns.

At this point, my companian has his thumb jammed firmly up his arse with TWO Vespenes and, frankly, I've just built my Spawning Pool.

By the time 4 Zerglings got out there were FOUR shielded cannons.

We were by.

That map sucks for Zerg :  you can't get it protected quick enough, I've decided.

If the ranking system works this is pretty much what you can do. Basically if you're getting ranked in copper you're probably going to be up against a combination of people who just want some relaxed fun and those who just suck at the game. Of course if your problem is you need to actually know build orders, etc. to avoid just getting rushed every time 5 minutes in then, yeah, the game seems to be brutish and short (based on what I've read, since I'm not actually in the beta) but there'll also be a crapload of custom maps and games out not long after release that will cater more towards what you want. Or just play co-op versus the computer. Competitive SCII is not going to be the only multiplayer option, I spent a long time playing SC multi but never got into competitive matches. There were more than enough other options to keep me entertained for a good few months.

The Insane AI on Warcraft 3 gives you an utter kicking, especially if there's five of them in a free for all.


I'm quite confident that if I get sick of other people, I can still blow shit up for fun.