Starcraft 2 Beta

[Vengance_01]

Fast lings and roaches eat zelots alive. I do agree, as terran its hard, thats why you need fast hellions with upgrade along with MM's. Also scout scout scout.

 

[Vengance_01]

man i suck so many balls, i have lost twice to the medium ai, i need me some asian skills.

Don't worry. Me and my friend were getting owned by the hard AI due to rust and the AI is not bad. They scout and even micro units to a degree. But we won the last 3 after losing the first 2

 

[Intel_Hydralisk]

So anyone know how the placement works now? It says '2 remaining' before you do any. I just won 2 with my partner and it's 0 remaining but we're not placed in a league. Also, my partner said he played against a guy who had 6 games played in 1v1 but wasn't placed in a league.

EDIT: on a side note... the insane computers are really insane. After losing a 2v2 against 2 insanes that literally outproduced us 3:1 by 5 minutes into the game, we decided to just play it SC1 style. Mass canons + bunkers ftw.

 

[GriMReapeRAK]

If anyone wants to play some co-op just PM me. I'm playing on easy difficulty at the moment, just to get used to everything.

 

[Yoshiyuki Blade]

I kept losing to insane AI till I found out that it's like WC3 with rigged resource gathering for them.

 

[Intel_Hydralisk]

Well that didn't take long. Sure fire way to mess with even insane computers... air harass. Mutalisk harass will literally make their massive armies dance around. Just won a 3v3 that way. Kept harassing until my partners massed up their armies. I even took out a computer since they're terrible against defending harasses. So much for insane...

 

[BDV]

So got a question... if you open another persons account profile, does it show their real name now?

Can't get to SC right now.

 

[PornoSatan]

So got a question... if you open another persons account profile, does it show their real name now?

Can't get to SC right now.

No.

 

[Intel_Hydralisk]

HAH! I just got the achievement for beating 7 insane computers in a FFA... that game was crazy and twisted.

 

[thehybridfrog]

So got a question... if you open another persons account profile, does it show their real name now?

Can't get to SC right now.

You have to know their e-mail, and they have to accept your real-id friend invite.

 

[Yoshiyuki Blade]

Awsome lol. My bro and I took out 2v2 insane comps by turtling in and going "motherships" (BC & Carriers) and mowed them down without much trouble. The Zerg AI is pretty screwed up. So many roaches running around helplessly. Much easier to to beat with a human partner.

 

[PornoSatan]

HAH! I just got the achievement for beating 7 insane computers in a FFA... that game was crazy and twisted.

What did you do? Just turtle and mass?

 

[Intel_Hydralisk]

What did you do? Just turtle and mass?

There's only one 8 player map... I went terran and lifted off to the corner island expansion immediately. Eventually made my way to battlecruisers. I was mass expanding at one point but they all died eventually. Story of the game was more than enough minerals, need more gas. At the end I controlled both island expansions and had enough battlecruisers to win.

The last computer had more score than me but I still won. The map's starting locations are so close to each other that the computers pretty much kill each other off within 5 minutes. It's down to a 3 way FFA pretty early.

 

[darkhunter139]

Just did two 3v3's. First game back I was pretty rusty and screwed up my build order bad and we got owned. Won the second game though

 

[Serpico]

Wizardhawk - You should read this: http://www.sirlin.net/ptw

This chapter in particular: http://www.sirlin.net/articles/playing-to-win-part-1.html

The game is very well balanced right now and a lot of the things you have issues with have solid counters.

 

[Serpico]

Re: the Sirlin links from above, here is a very relevant section:

A common call of the scrub is to cry that the kind of play in which ones tries to win at all costs is "boring" or "not fun." Let's consider two groups of players: a group of good players and a group of scrubs. The scrubs will play "for fun" and not explore the extremities of the game. They won't find the most effective tactics and abuse them mercilessly. The good players will. The good players will find incredibly overpowering tactics and patterns. As they play the game more, they'll be forced to find counters to those tactics. The vast majority of tactics that at first appear unbeatable end up having counters, though they are often quite esoteric and difficult to discover. The counter tactic prevents the first player from doing the tactic, but the first player can then use a counter to the counter. The second player is now afraid to use his counter and he's again vulnerable to the original overpowering tactic. (See my article on Yomi layer 3 for much more on that.)

Notice that the good players are reaching higher and higher levels of play. They found the "cheap stuff" and abused it. They know how to stop the cheap stuff. They know how to stop the other guy from stopping it so they can keep doing it. And as is quite common in competitive games, many new tactics will later be discovered that make the original cheap tactic look wholesome and fair. Often in fighting games, one character will have something so good it's unfair. Fine, let him have that. As time goes on, it will be discovered that other characters have even more powerful and unfair tactics. Each player will attempt to steer the game in the direction of his own advantages, much how grandmaster chess players attempt to steer opponents into situations in which their opponents are weak.

This goes into the whole evolution of the "meta-game" that happens with deep competitive games like Street Fighter and Starcraft.

 

[Serpico]

man i suck so many balls, i have lost twice to the medium ai, i need me some asian skills.

Blucklesworth, aka Chill from TeamLiquid, posted a very helpful three part guide to economy based RTS games on Shacknews a while back. I point it to people that need help getting started.

Scroll down to the highlighted posts in the thread.

http://www.shacknews.com/laryn.x?id=22567622#itemanchor_22567622
http://www.shacknews.com/laryn.x?id=22607493#itemanchor_22607493
http://www.shacknews.com/laryn.x?id=22798670#itemanchor_22798670

The idea is that macro, not micro, is the most important part of Starcraft. You will kill AI on medium and even hard EASILY if you can have a solid economy and just pump out lots of units with a tight build order. Pump out lots of shit.

You can Google for good build orders. TeamLiquid's Liquipedia or places like HuskyStarcraft's Youtube channel have good build orders that you can learn from. Get these things nailed down and pretty soon it'll be second nature, then you can focus on the other stuff.

Liquipedia: http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Main_Page
Husky's Youtube Channel, just search "tutorial" in his sidebar and some basic build orders should be there: http://www.youtube.com/huskystarcraft

They are from many many patches ago and a few things can be tightened up, but it is a very good start.

 

[Deluded]

Nice links! I'll be sure to remember them, though I already do all of these.

Still need to learn how to handle getting rushed by others, especially zealot rushes as a zerg. I STILL haven't found a decent counter to that, and I always build my roach warran too late.

 

[Serpico]

Nice links! I'll be sure to remember them, though I already do all of these.

Still need to learn how to handle getting rushed by others, especially zealot rushes as a zerg. I STILL haven't found a decent counter to that, and I always build my roach warran too late.

Scouting should be able to tell you if he's going to rush or not, as does map selection. A rush is much more likely to happen on something like Steppes Of War than it is on like Metalocalypse so you should prepare appropriately, or do something crazy like 6 or 7 pool zergling rush. Also note that an all-in zealot rush will put him way behind on tech since he had to skip a cyber core and gas production to get them out so fast.

I'm not a zerg player though so I don't really have any specific advice to give on rush counters. Decko?

 

[Deluded]

Scouting should be able to tell you if he's going to rush or not, as does map selection. A rush is much more likely to happen on something like Steppes Of War than it is on like Metalocalypse so you should prepare appropriately, or do something crazy like 6 or 7 pool zergling rush. Also note that an all-in zealot rush will put him way behind on tech since he had to skip a cyber core and gas production to get them out so fast.

I'm not a zerg player though so I don't really have any specific advice to give on rush counters. Decko?

6-7 pool zergling rush... do you by any chance mean after producing your first queen, all of your avaliable slots are going to zerglings?

beside, I DO scout. The problem is, COUNTERING those. I've found out multiple times that they're going to rush me, but never managed to ramp up a appropriate counter.

 

[alphaqforever247]

gave my friend my extra beta key but his auto patcher doesnt start up. any fixes?

 

[Jaerb4]

6-7 pool zergling rush... do you by any chance mean after producing your first queen, all of your avaliable slots are going to zerglings?

beside, I DO scout. The problem is, COUNTERING those. I've found out multiple times that they're going to rush me, but never managed to ramp up a appropriate counter.

It depends on the map, but on something close like Steppes, you should already expect early 2 gate pressure (which is not a rush.)

Unless your micro is extremely good, you will not be able to hold off heavy pressure while fast expanding on a small map. Your best bet is pool first and a fast gas. 14pool/13gas or 13/12. As soon as the gas finishes, you put 3 workers on it and by the time the pool is done, you'll have 100 gas to start zergling speed. Make sure you've already started your creep tumors at this point, because you'll really need the extra speed if you go speedling/queen vs zealots. It's also a good idea to make 2 queens per early hatch, in case void rays show up.

You could spend gas on an early Roach Warren instead of the speed, just make sure you don't overproduce them. With micro, you really only need a few (3-4) to hold off zealots on creep. You can then throw down your expansion soon after.

The nice thing with speedlings is that they'll give you map control and scouting so you can deny expos or scouting probes. This is especially true on something like Desert Oasis, where the nats are so far from the main.

In a 6 pool, you don't make a queen. You want your lings out to disrupt as soon as possible, and you won't have enough drones to support spawn larva.

 

[Jutsu]

Arggg lost my first last match night on Scrap Station because you can no longer blink across those gaps from base to island to right into your opponents base. I had no idea until I tried and there was nothing in the patch notes about nerfing blink range or if it was a bug...

I would have won too cause my opponent did nothing but 3 gate zeals into DTs and hadn't expanded. I stopped his zealot rush which was his whole army at the time and was ready to blink in about dozen stalkers into the back of his base when blink failed....

 

[Wizardhawk]

lol Wizardhawk, you make it sound like zlots are impossible to beat. keep in mind that protoss does not have infiite chronoboost, and zlots dont cost 5 mineral, they cost 100, so it's not very cheap.

don't take offense to this, but it's hard to be credible and claim a certain unit is too strong when you're only bronze. that just means you either need to execute you strategies better, or have better planning. zlots rush is pretty easy to deal with for me.

Don't take offense to this, but it's hard to be credible if you think that someone's 3v3 random placement means diddly after it just came back up. If you think you can single handedly win a 3v3, you are smoking the crack pipe. Also, their placement system is a piece of garbage just like every other placement system/auto matchmaking. Before it went down I was in platinum 3v3 4v4 and 2v2. Me and my brother went 4 and 1 and got placed in the same platinum division as someone who went 2 and 3... if you honestly think someone going 2 and 3 is equal to someone going 4 and 1 then who knows, maybe you enjoy failures of matchmaking like that and enjoy basing your opinions off it, that's your perogative.

Secondly, I am in bronze 3v3 random this time because I had some of the most garbage teammates i've ever seen. 4 of my placement matches resulted in a loss at below 10 minutes because I was the only person on my team who made more than 3 units (in one game my protoss ally had 2 gateways 2 stargates and walled his side off, but he had 2 zealots for his army when we got hit by a 3 man attack). Anyhoo, go ahead and think i'm bad, i've only played 200 or so 2v2 matches and not won a single match if it was against 2 protoss who went for zealots.

 

[refraxion]

Scouting should be able to tell you if he's going to rush or not, as does map selection. A rush is much more likely to happen on something like Steppes Of War than it is on like Metalocalypse so you should prepare appropriately, or do something crazy like 6 or 7 pool zergling rush. Also note that an all-in zealot rush will put him way behind on tech since he had to skip a cyber core and gas production to get them out so fast.

I'm not a zerg player though so I don't really have any specific advice to give on rush counters. Decko?

If you're going 2 hatch right away, always have a second queen building while the 2nd hatch is being produced, send one over and build one or two well placed spine crawlers. Build some lings and you should be fine to fend off, transition into hydra/ few roaches.

 

[Vermillion]

Arggg lost my first last match night on Scrap Station because you can no longer blink across those gaps from base to island to right into your opponents base. I had no idea until I tried and there was nothing in the patch notes about nerfing blink range or if it was a bug...

I would have won too cause my opponent did nothing but 3 gate zeals into DTs and hadn't expanded. I stopped his zealot rush which was his whole army at the time and was ready to blink in about dozen stalkers into the back of his base when blink failed....

Here is a list of all the unlisted patch changes:

http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=134701

In other news I still suck at this game. 1-3 with my placement matches so far. Not that I mind but going back and watching the replays hurt because I see exactly what I did wrong and it's the same shit I've been doing. My brain just doesn't like this RTS stuff I guess.

 

[CrimsonKnight13]

Thanks for the link, Vermillion. It seems that there are a lot of bugs that need to be fixed yet. I'm wondering if the game will be need to be patched on Day 1...

 

[Jutsu]

Lol the Stalker "fix" only affects Scrap Station too, since they have nerfed the distance they can blink it seems. It is a shame cause it was a solid strat that won me a lot of matches. Had my BO, wall of and timings down for it and everything.

 

[Intel_Hydralisk]

6-7 pool zergling rush... do you by any chance mean after producing your first queen, all of your avaliable slots are going to zerglings?

beside, I DO scout. The problem is, COUNTERING those. I've found out multiple times that they're going to rush me, but never managed to ramp up a appropriate counter.

You don't build a queen if you 6/7 pool. A 6/7 pool is worthless in 1v1 since you can stop it with just workers and the zerg player is massively behind so it doesn't even matter if you lose half your workers.

 

[b1m2x3]

were more keys sent out today?
(does anyone have a spare?)

 

[Syntaxx]

well i figured since its been awhile id do the practice matches first and jesus im losing all of them im 0-4 on practice and before the beta closed I was doing decent but i didnt play the last couple weeks of beta so I'm really rusty but damn im gettin owned like a punk. =( Some matches were close but still felt uneven o well maybe it will get better in my placement matches. I;ve been playing as random but keep getting terrain ive tired a couple different builds depending on the map and all matches have been 1v1.

 

[Intel_Hydralisk]

Wow is there a diamond league anymore? I went 5-0 but got placed in platinum. There are a bunch of other 5-0's in my division as well as 15-2 and 10-1... but there's also a 3-2. Sigh.

 

[Wizardhawk]

Me and my brother are both hoping that the highest you can get placed is platinum and that you have to earn your way into diamond, and if all the 5-0's are getting platinum that might be the case.

 

[refraxion]

Wow is there a diamond league anymore? I went 5-0 but got placed in platinum. There are a bunch of other 5-0's in my division as well as 15-2 and 10-1... but there's also a 3-2. Sigh.

Diamond league has to be earned. Not everyone deserves to be in diamond league anymore . It was like this before beta went down. Just keep playing, I think I went 10 or 12-0 before it pushed me into diamond last time.

 

[Intel_Hydralisk]

Diamond league has to be earned. Not everyone deserves to be in diamond league anymore . It was like this before beta went down.

Hrm, I didn't play for 2 patches before beta went down since I was out of the country. But if that 15-2 guy doesn't deserve diamond... then I wonder what the criteria is.

 

[refraxion]

Yeah, I don't even know what Blizz is doing with their ladder system, its so secretive.. its like luck based if you get bumped up or not. It could be if you play better players and beat them in a row with decent APM you get bumped up.. that or it could be where Blizz's diamond league was not accessible to anyone and they have to fix it.. haha.

 

[Yoshiyuki Blade]

Well I'm pretty sure all of his matches weren't all against similarly-skilled players. Blizzard stated at one point that their matchmaking system may have been *too* good and players would burn out by constantly playing challenging opponents. Maybe they relaxed the system a bit, and a large portion of those wins were from lower division opponents.

 

[Wizardhawk]

I'm assuming by APM you mean actions per minute? If so, I really really really hope blizzard isn't retarded enough to tie that into 'skill' because it takes zero talent or skill to select your drones and hatchery 7000 times in the first 5 minutes of the game and then just keep randomly clicking shit just to get your APM up.

 

[thehybridfrog]

Blizzard's current ladder system for SC2 calculates skill the same as WC3 and WoW more recently. It's called ELL "Estimated Ladder Level". It is hidden in SC2, not hidden in WoW I believe. ELL estimates skill level more accurately than rating because it takes into account the skill level of your opponent.

What this results in is uneven distribution of rating points. A player would go +15 for beating a similarly skilled opponent, but only maybe -5 for losing to one because he deserves to be much better, but not that much worse.

This rating system has been heavily criticized in the past for favoring extreme grinding, basically playing massive amounts of games.

The league approach, which is the separation of silver/gold/plat/diamond attempts to eliminate this massive grinding approach by basically reseting your rating to the level of your current competition but NOT your ELL whenever you move divisions. Meaning even if you massively grind you will not earn headwind unless you are in diamond already.

 

[Yoshiyuki Blade]

This rating system has been heavily criticized in the past for favoring extreme grinding, basically playing massive amounts of games.

I don't see how the former system qualifies as "grinding." Your rating will never improve until you start actually winning games. Even in WoW arena (in TBC, I don't have much experience in WotLK), couple dozen or so wins in a row can bring you among the higher end players. But I guess it can be a pain for high-level players to start from the bottom and work their way up. And also because arena matches range in a few minutes while SC games can vary from a few minutes to over an hour.