StarCraft II

[Tairnyn]

Good lord. I feel like I play this game in some lower dimensional reality when I watch this. I can't even fathom their awareness of every detail of what is going on.

[Abagadro]

I tried to analogize how I play Starcraft compared to those type of people with how I can play golf compared to Tiger Woods. She couldn't fathom the difference in just a video game but watching that validates my analogy.

[Fordel]

I've been waiting to see a Zerg play like that since Beta. The only thing that could have made that even more awesome would be even more creep spreading (he says in hindsight from his armchair  ). "There in the walls, THERE IN THE WALLS!", that Protoss player is going to have nightmares for days.


I was also surprised how well the Archons held up against the Ultra's, makes me wonder if he converted even more Templar into Archons if that fight would have ended differently.

You could really see that the Zerg's play was totally flustering the Protoss in that game though. The Toss player had like 3-4 Observers just doing nothing at their Robo-Bay waypoint for like half the game, or watching two stray zerglings take out like 4 gateways.

[trias_e]

Just lost to mass ravens in quite frankly the most embarassing loss of my starcraft life.  And, of course, my friend was watching and thinks I'm a total idiot now.  Which I am.

[slog]

Played about 20 Matches as Zerg and I can't believe how much harder it is to play than Terran.   Terran is definitely easy mode.  It's completely ridiculous that Zerg has to macro Queen vomit at each base when compared to the Macro of Terran.

[Sophismata]

So I went to a LAN cafe. They claimed they had Starcraft II installed. I was planning to play 2 v 2 compstomps with my friend. Just a test-drive of sorts - we're about to get our seats when the clerk asked us, 'You need to have your own B.Net accounts to play team skirmishes. or else you're stuck with single player. Sorry, that's just the way it is.'

So instead, we went to watch Salt that night.

Shame. My LAN cafe uses a scripted B.Net login to let people play online.

[Tairnyn]

Played about 20 Matches as Zerg and I can't believe how much harder it is to play than Terran.   Terran is definitely easy mode.  It's completely ridiculous that Zerg has to macro Queen vomit at each base when compared to the Macro of Terran.

As a mostly Terran player, I can't help but agree. I just assign control groups to my unit-generating structures and spam whatever I need. Whenever I play Zerg I need to keep moving my view back to may bases and target queens to keep my production rate up. It's certainly a step up with respect to APM.

[Ironwood]

Awesome PvZ Game

Ironwood needs to watch this

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

I already did, I have the replay.

It was a great game, but the Protoss player didn't really play terribly well.  I like the theory that he got flustered, but the truth of the matter is he should have tried to get more map control and used a lot more observers and possibly air.  Also, Collosi would have helped a bit.

But once you let your Zerg opponant Nydus ULTRAS into your base, you're kinda done.

[K9]

I really like the way he used Nydus worms to evacuate his units. By the end of the game though his mobility was just stupidly good.

[Mosesandstick]

http://starcraftarena.net/forum/index.php?topic=7010

Epic thread about one of Day9's riddles.

[jakonovski]

http://starcraftarena.net/forum/index.php?topic=7010

Epic thread about one of Day9's riddles.

[Mosesandstick]

 

The whole thread is worth reading. I don't want to spoil it.

[apocrypha]

QED, bitches. best first post ever.

Fuck, that made me laugh a lot 

[Strazos]

Hmm...so I am being repeatedly stomped in Platinum...how the hell did I get in there anyway? Any way to get put back to a lower tier, one more appropriate for my lacking skills? Don't really get to learn a whole lot when the average game is about 12 minutes or so. 

[Fordel]

If you keep getting stomped, you'll find yourself back in the lower brackets soon enough.

[sinij]

If you keep getting stomped, you'll find yourself back in the lower brackets soon enough.

Ranking system is broken, so there is no guarantee that it will do that in reasonable time. Generally speaking you need to win couple games before it re-adjust its evaluation, this can be a problem if you have no chance of winning at your current MMR. My advice - throw 15 games in a row, then keep doing cheese rush until you eventually win couple.

[Soulflame]

They're probably using the broken ass rating system from WoW Arena, in which case, good luck to Blizzard on ever making it work.

[K9]

Maybe I'm just lucky, but 100 games or so in, the matchmaking is going much better. Early on it was a lot worse, I think it's just hard for it to place you at the start.

You should drop to gold or silver after some losses.

[Strazos]

It's hilarious because I was something like 4-1 in placement, now 0 - whatthefuckever (15?) in platinum.

I think part of the problem is that I don't go nearly aggressive enough building unit producers, or other such things...

Go reapers to scout/harass...get fended off, stomped because I was producing reapers;
Build lot of something else....didn't have anything to scout with, and stomped

or just generally outproduced for various reasons. Last game I got hit with (seemingly early) dark templars. They broke my wall before I could drop a turret or scan, then overrun by zealots/stalkers.

Also, I need to stop getting so absorbed into whatever I am doing, and forgetting to build shit...ugh.

Makes me just want to go play TF2; something I'm much better at.

[K9]

This is also why you should lose all your placement matches on purpose 

What rank are you in your league? If you are down near the bottom you should be gradually matched up with more Gold players, and maybe a few silver, even bronze.

[Yoru]

I drunk-bought* this over the weekend. I played my placement matches whilst waiting for some local friends to get back from the burger joint. I was 1 for 5, and the 1 was because I "borrowed" a neat trick on one map I saw from one guy and it turned out to work.

Hi, I'm Bronze League, rank #98. Nowhere to go but up! 

On the other hand, teaming up with a friend of mine got us placed in Bronze #15 after a couple 2v2 matches.

(*) Yes, drunk-bought. Came home stinking drunk, woke up on the couch the next morning with an "order complete" webpage open on my computer and 60 euros less in my wallet.

[Strazos]

I have to be towards the bottom; I'm o-fer in my league.

Also, how can you tell what league your opponent is from?

[Malakili]

I have to be towards the bottom; I'm o-fer in my league.

Also, how can you tell what league your opponent is from?

After the match you can go to your match history and then look at their profile.

[Ironwood]

(*) Yes, drunk-bought. Came home stinking drunk, woke up on the couch the next morning with an "order complete" webpage open on my computer and 60 euros less in my wallet.

You stuffed Euro Notes into the USB port ?

You were drunk !

[slog]

Lost 10 straight matches as Zerg.  Here is what I have learned:

-Zerg is 10x as busy as Terran.
-I don't know how to control an Army that requires actual skill like Zerg
-I have no clue how to bust through a Terran wall without losing my banelings to tanks
-Blizzard obviously made Zerg this hard so they could balance at the Diamond E-Sport level.

Enjoy the suckage!  (PS don't buy this game)

[Strazos]

You seem to have micro problems; your banelings were sort of rolling around, and Not blowing up the buildings.

But Macro...you should have produced him into the ground. He was putting zero pressure on you. You could have made a few mutalisks and wiped him for most of the game; he had just a few marines.

You needed to be more aggressive, make more drones. You did well at one point; got through and hosed his SCVs. He didn't even rebuild them.

Game was hard to watch...not that I can talk.

PS: What is an easy way to make replays available to others?

[slog]

I use gamereplays.org

here is another loss that I should have won.  I was pretty agressive that game, but my micro was bad.  I had no answer for the Terran marines and tanks.

[Ironwood]

If the guy's not expecting it, burrowing roaches will fuck up tanks every time.  The trick with that is terran have the easiest detection in the game.

Also, Infestors are a good laugh burrowed also.  You could either pop up and MC the tanks (much fun) or throw the infested terrans all over the shop, right beside the tanks.  Also fun.

Have you considered reading the Word of the Nydus ?

[slog]

Here is a guy on SA who made it to Platinum by working rushing on a trial account:

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3345775

[K9]

Lost 10 straight matches as Zerg.  Here is what I have learned:

I feel your pain, I play random and Zerg is just a lot less forgiving than Terran, that said, there are a lot of small things you could do better.

You really really should not have lost this game. Any terran who turtles as hard as that (he walled himself in solidly after your first bust, whould have to use medivacs to get anything in or out) is crippling themselves. You did the right thing to establish map control, although I think you overexpanded. When you added two new hatcheries you were barely mining at either. Focusing on one would have been a lot more productive.

Anyhow, simple points:

 - 14 pool 15/16 hatch is a decent opener. If you get your gas at 10 though while you spawn in your first overlord you can get the extractor up, replace the lost drone and then you'll have enough resources for zergling speed and a queen as soon as your pool pops, and then enough resources for hive straight after queen
 - You stopped producing workers. I realise with Zerg balancing your workers and army is a massive hassle, but you need to keep droning up.
 - You didn't spread creep. As soon as you have hive tech all your overlords should be producing creep. The lack of creep crippled your hydras as they are really slow. I would also have put overlords at every expansion site as soon as you can, spawning creep. That way you would have spotted his expansion and you would have killed it and probably won. I'd say getting better creep spread with overlords and tumors would have been the game changer for you.
 - With your banelings against a terran wall you need to commit. Pulling them out halfway is only going to get them killed while doing no damage at all
 - Against a turtled terran who isn't expanding you want to harass with air typically. Fly in with a 6-10 mutas kill an scv or two fly out. Keep hitting and running and you'll wear the guy down. Or hit at the back, and do banelings at the front.
 - You could have sacrificed an overlord or two, or used changelings to scout his base. Someone turtled so hard is going to need air units, so not anticipating this and getting mutas hurt you.

You really deserved to win that one

[K9]

Here you just got out macroed early and never managed to catch up. This person was probably a better match for you, what let you down was not having enough drones. If you watch your drone count at ~15mins he has almost double your workers. That's a pretty hard income deficit to come back from.

Also, expanding way out at the high yield when your natural wasn't even close to saturated, and you had no means to defend it was a mistake. Zerg is tough because you have to expand to keep up unit production, but you don't want to over-expand with hatcheries that just sit idle, unless you are in a very commanding position.

[slog]

Is there a way to get your drone count in game?  (I know you can do it for the replays)

Edit: early on, what am I supposed to do about 4 zealots in my base at 7:00 minutes?  When I scouted him, I didn't see anything that jumped out at me as "early attack"

[Mosesandstick]

I guess you could always use the rough count of 6 (right?) patches + 2 geyesers ~ 24 workers per base.

[K9]

No there isn't, it's just one of those things you have to get a feel for. The best rule is when in doubt, always make a few more workers. Generally it should look like each node has 1-2 workers on it and several in motion.

Edit: early on, what am I supposed to do about 4 zealots in my base at 7:00 minutes?  When I scouted him, I didn't see anything that jumped out at me as "early attack"

A single spine crawler tucked up against your hatchery and 4-6 zerglings will hold that off. Against melee units (zerglings/zealots) if you tuck buildings against each other there's less surface area for them to surround and attack. Dropping the spine crawler is generally not a bad investment. Even if there is no early push there's good chances of mid-late game harass on your mineral line.

I guess you could always use the rough count of 6 (right?) patches + 2 geyesers ~ 24 workers per base.

It's 8 patches per base typically iirc, so 30 workers or so. That said, there are diminishing returns, for a 40-min game like the one linked you'd probably want to have about 50 workers by the end.

Another rough general rule is that zerg needs at least one base more than the opponents to be competitive, mainly due to the larvae mechanic.

[K9]

In other news, pvp is pretty dull, however hallucinations are a seriously under-utilised ability, and can make the game a lot more fun.