A Player's Review of StarCraft 2

[snoopy]

I mean, I went 15-4 at one point in 4v4 Gold league (though I mostly zealot rushed), then after I hit Platinum league, this is where I met my downfall, and since then I've taken a hiatus.

After all, it's SC2.

I started that way, too. Once you get to better players, they know how to tech and defend against the rush at the same time, making so your rush just barely doesn't hurt them, and they get ahead tech-wise.

[SirWinner]

Been playing StarCraft 2 for a few weeks now... almost daily.

If anyone wants to add me to their friends list here's my SC2 info:

Character Name: SevenUp
Character Code: 369

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Not ready for prime time yet... up to 710 achievement points so far with tons more to go.

Played mostly Single Player, quite a few me versus A.I. (40 custom multiplayer games), and 3 cooperative games.

Did complete the Wings of Liberty Campaign on easy to see the mission... now working on it in Normal mode.

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Are we having fun yet?

[Avder]

So, how is everyone doing so far in this? Ive just started multiplayer and I'm stuck in the Cheese leagues (bronze), while I polish off stuff like the basics.

Anyone from the DBB in Diamond? We should get a bunch of DBB'ers going practicing together and doing team play or something. Could be fun.

[Stroodles]

So, how is everyone doing so far in this? Ive just started multiplayer and I'm stuck in the Cheese leagues (bronze), while I polish off stuff like the basics.

Anyone from the DBB in Diamond? We should get a bunch of DBB'ers going practicing together and doing team play or something. Could be fun.

I play 4v4 randoms as Random mostly now. I'm plat for 1v1, and Rank 3 Gold 4v4 (but I expect to be moving up soon there, winning close to 3\\4 of the games now).

I'd be game for something like that.

[Avder]

So, how is everyone doing so far in this? Ive just started multiplayer and I'm stuck in the Cheese leagues (bronze), while I polish off stuff like the basics.

Anyone from the DBB in Diamond? We should get a bunch of DBB'ers going practicing together and doing team play or something. Could be fun.

I play 4v4 randoms as Random mostly now. I'm plat for 1v1, and Rank 3 Gold 4v4 (but I expect to be moving up soon there, winning close to 3\\4 of the games now).

I'd be game for something like that.

Awesome, so thats one so far. Who else?

[Gooberman]

I made it out of Bronze but then fell back into it.

I have to say I don't really play the main multiplayer game at all now. It just didn't grab me like WC3.

I do play some of the custom game \"TUGS\". Yes, they are cheesy, but a bit of mindless, low effort, fun.

[snoopy]

So, how is everyone doing so far in this? Ive just started multiplayer and I'm stuck in the Cheese leagues (bronze), while I polish off stuff like the basics.

Anyone from the DBB in Diamond? We should get a bunch of DBB'ers going practicing together and doing team play or something. Could be fun.

I'm in diamond 4v4, but don't really belong there. I have my moments of brilliance, and generally don't keep up.

I kinda prefer playing with random people, because then I'm not letting someone that I know down when I suck.

[Darktalyn1]

I'm a 1700+ diamond Zerg. Been slowly climbing the ladder when I can

I pretty much only play 1v1s.

[Avder]

I'm a 1700+ diamond Zerg. Been slowly climbing the ladder when I can

I pretty much only play 1v1s.

Awesome. Got any pointers to help me get out of the cheese leagues?

[snoopy]

Awesome. Got any pointers to help me get out of the cheese leagues?

It kinda depends on what race you're playing.

I don't really know terr, but here are my thoughts on zerg and prot:

prot: Get/use warpgates. The moment your b+y (whatever it's called) building finishes being made, start researching it, and chrono boost the research.

Watch out for Reapers... Try to get stalkers early b/c zealots suck against reapers.

Zerg: Get a feeling for how long it takes for prot to rush out VR's, and make sure you go harrass/scout before then. If they do try to fast tech VR's, they can catch you without anti-air. I think the best counter for this is to engage them before they can get that far.

Hydras all kinds of pwn air units.

Roaches are the standard build, and are very strong against ground units. Banelings can be really deadly, especially if you get good at micro... a combo a banelings and zerglings done right can completely wipe out a mineral line almost instantly.


General:
Constantly make drones/probes/SCV's
Keep track of your supply.
Spend to keep up with your money.
Chronoboost/Mule/Do the queen-hatchery thing.
Get your damage/armor/shield upgrades.

Most of the cheese is easy to counter:
Get detection pre-emptively
Scout early, so you can react to what the other guy is doing.
Keep a few units close to your mineral line.

I think the hardest thing is anti-ground versus anti-air. Usually the person with the best intel wins that one... fast pushes to air can be countered with rushes and correct unit production. Massed ground units can be countered with air units and knowledge of when they're coming.

[Darktalyn1]

If you're a toss player and want to climb the ladder, just learn to 4 warpgate.

Seriously. That's all you need to be an above average diamond player. Practice a 4 warpgate build and plant a forward pylon when your army pushes. It's nasty as hell. I see it coming all the time, try to prepare for it, and still get broken down.

[snoopy]

what are you guy's tags?

[Avder]

Avidius
353

I'm working through the campaign on brutal. I just went through on hard and got all the achievements. So far brutal is...brutal.

[SirWinner]

Alias: SevenUp
Player Code: 369

Yet to play in SC2 Leagues... still not comfortable enough to tread in unprepared for battle.

Up to 1355 SC2 Achievement Points... that's pretty low.

Does help to find videos on YouTube to learn how to do the Challenges... some of them are extremely difficult until you get help.

[Avder]

Alias: SevenUp
Player Code: 369

Yet to play in SC2 Leagues... still not comfortable enough to tread in unprepared for battle.

Up to 1355 SC2 Achievement Points... that's pretty low.

Does help to find videos on YouTube to learn how to do the Challenges... some of them are extremely difficult until you get help.

Ive basically been farming achievements in single player and custom game lately. Ive got 100% of the campaign achievements, all of the exploration achievements that can be achieved in singleplayer, and just polished of all of the relevant custom game achievements.

I could go for a co-op partner, or someone to maybe try some 2v2 with. I'm too antisocial to do random teams.

[Lothar]

Ive got 100% of the campaign achievements

Impressive. I'm still working my way through brutal completionist. Keep getting frustrated at the Great Train Robbery mission. Finished all the other branches but Char.

[Avder]

Ive got 100% of the campaign achievements

Impressive. I'm still working my way through brutal completionist. Keep getting frustrated at the Great Train Robbery mission. Finished all the other branches but Char.

http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/T ... in_Robbery

This should help.

[SirWinner]

Safe Haven and Haven's Fall... my 2 least favorite SC2 missions.

Too many hotkeys to remember most of the time.

So I am an average player yet to play Player Vs. Player in SC2.

Most of the Challenges have been done.

The ONLY really obnoxious one is the Arcade Machine... Best score so far is about 50,000 to 60,000. IF I could configure my Joystick to play that it wouldn't be so damn hard. It would be like playing Descent with only a keyboard again... not very good!

[Avder]

Safe Haven and Haven's Fall... my 2 least favorite SC2 missions.

Both are really easy once you know what to do with your vikings. On Safe Haven, immediately send them to the right, blow up the warp prisms giving power and sight to the photon cannons and then land on the cliff and nail the nexus. You can perform similar cheese against the other two nexii with larger and larger forces of vikings.

On Havens Fall, you can use the vikings to intercept a lot of the units they send to each settlement and then once the virophage pops into view you can land, snipe it, and lift off before you lose a vikings.

Too many hotkeys to remember most of the time.

Have you given Grid hotkeys a shot? Go into preferences and in the scheme selection, select grid or grid for lefties depending on your handedness.

What grid does is it makes each spot on the command card correspond to a certain key all the time. For example, when you have a command center selected, the train SCV button is in the very top left of the command card. Under grid, thats going to be Q all the time.

The top row of the command card becomes QWERT, Middle becomes ASDFG, and bottom row becomes ZXCVB.

Heres a well done video that explains it:

Basically, right now, using grid, I can play as any race and only need to memorize a build order instead of three races of assorted hotkeys.

The ONLY really obnoxious one is the Arcade Machine... Best score so far is about 50,000 to 60,000. IF I could configure my Joystick to play that it wouldn't be so damn hard. It would be like playing Descent with only a keyboard again... not very good!

Think thats hard? Look at this thing:

But seriously, once you get used to whatever degree of input lag you end up with (results seem to vary between horrendous lag and no lag), lost viking is not very hard. I recommend getting the side missiles power-up, both drones, and the rest bombs. A lot of guides I read recommended double plasma and drones, but the major downside of that is if you lose your drones, you're toasted by the multitude of little enemies (scourge and wraiths). Meanwhile with side missiles, the boss battles take longer, but their attacks are not hard to dodge, and you should have a ton of bombs available as you just annihilate anything less than a boss with side missiles and drones.

[Lothar]

Safe Haven and Haven's Fall... my 2 least favorite SC2 missions.

On Havens Fall, you can use the vikings to intercept a lot of the units they send to each settlement and then once the virophage pops into view you can land, snipe it, and lift off before you lose a vikings.

It helps if you add a couple science vessels to the mix. Also a hercules full of medics and marauders is a great way to take down a virophage, and you can immediately reload and go attack a zerg base.

[Avder]

Safe Haven and Haven's Fall... my 2 least favorite SC2 missions.

On Havens Fall, you can use the vikings to intercept a lot of the units they send to each settlement and then once the virophage pops into view you can land, snipe it, and lift off before you lose a vikings.

It helps if you add a couple science vessels to the mix. Also a hercules full of medics and marauders is a great way to take down a virophage, and you can immediately reload and go attack a zerg base.

Depends on how early you do haven I spose. I might have had science vessels when I went through on brutal, but brutal didnt allow me to intercepot virphage attempts nearly as easily as I could on hard. And what my strategy always was was do a small turtle with one bunker on the north approach and two-three bunkers on the south approach and build a nice bioball of marines, medics, and mauraders while my bikings were out putting out fires. Then once the bio ball is big enough, nail the top zerg base and expand there, and then just run around clockwise until everything is melted.

Safe haven is much more straightforward and manageable I think, tho havens fall can overall be easier.

[Lothar]

what my strategy always was was do a small turtle with one bunker on the north approach and two-three bunkers on the south approach

Quick trick: lift off your starting factory, starport, barracks and relocate them to the left. Then you can just put up a cluster of bunkers next to your merc guild, defending both directions together.

once the bio ball is big enough, nail the top zerg base and expand there, and then just run around clockwise until everything is melted

Pretty much. If you have access to the Hercules you can get your bioball from place to place much faster, which makes the mission a whole lot easier.

[Avder]

what my strategy always was was do a small turtle with one bunker on the north approach and two-three bunkers on the south approach

Quick trick: lift off your starting factory, starport, barracks and relocate them to the left. Then you can just put up a cluster of bunkers next to your merc guild, defending both directions together.

That could work I suppose, but I always start a viking just as the mission starts and once I have two more built I drop a reactor down.

Also, perdition turrets rock the hell out of any infested that get sent.

once the bio ball is big enough, nail the top zerg base and expand there, and then just run around clockwise until everything is melted

Pretty much. If you have access to the Hercules you can get your bioball from place to place much faster, which makes the mission a whole lot easier.

The only mission I ever used the herculese in is The Moebius Factor on hard. On Brutal, I used ghosts to cheese. 10 ghosts, 3 medivacs, and a pair of science vessels and you can land near the datacores, nail all the detectors, and then nuke spam until they drop. You can also nuke the Brutalisk. I freaking LOVE campaign ghosts. Tons of fun on Moebius, Engine of Destruction, and Shatter the Sky.

[Avder]

So anyone feel like doing cooperative or team multiplayer? I wanna start tackling the cooperative achievements but I dont want to pair up with randoms while trying to take down some insane AI's

[Avder]

Bump.

[Xamindar]

Uhh, I think the hype on this game died pretty much right when it was released. My friend who wouldn't stop talking about Starcraft 2 from the moment it was announced in development only played it for a week after it was out and hasn't touched it since.

No lan play, missing 2/3 of the single player campaign, and no revolutionary gameplay makes for a very disappointing game. Goodbye Blizzard. It was nice knowing you when you weren't all about the money.

[TOR_LordRaven]

I played the Original Starcraft for a while, got excited when the second came out. Here is my review..

Overall Gameplay:
They Nailed the Feel for Starcraft2. It feels just like the original, except it looks much better. Base Management is way better. For instance you can command an SCV/Probe to build a list of things and when finished go back to gathering minerals.

The Graphics engine is outstanding. The game can be played on a wide range of platforms. My desktop plays it beautifuly with all the options turned on. And my laptop can also keep up when turning off some of the features.

You can have several building (Starports for example) hilighted and make each one build units.

Single Player:
Best part of this game, which is both good and bad.
Story Line is rich and in depth. Cutscenes are great, even the in-game ones. the Pre-Rendered cinematics are phenomenal.

Multiplayer:
Its okay. But its not Starcraft. I myself favored Terrans. As an example, in the original game, the only basic unit for Zerg that was considered \"Ranged\" was the Hydra. Zerglings were used at first. In the second game, Zerglings are barely used. Almost every unit is Ranged. In the first game, if you have a couple of Bunkers, and a Siege Tank behind them, you could withstand a pretty decent wave. Not so in the second game. You have to upgrade a Ton of things as Terran in order to hold the line.

(To get a Bunker to max potential, you have to upgrade all buildings armor, and upgrade the capacity of the bunker from 4 to 6. Takes longer to get there, and by that time your overrun.)

Overall its a good game. Does not live up to the Hype. If it had a \"Classic\" mode where you could use the Classic units and revert to their abilities and Values, along with LAN play, it would be perfect.

There are aspects of multiplayer that Starcraft could learn from. For Instance, the other SC game... Supreme Commander. Its much better at everything than Starcraft, except the single player.

As an example, in Supreme Commander, you can \"Merge\" your economy. So you both pull from the same resources. You can also give Units, or entire buildings to your ally. So if he does have money but ran out of units, he is still in the game.

its a shame Supreme Commander did not get the hype that Starcraft did. Its a superior Multi-player RTS in my opinion. AND IT HAS LAN PLAY!

[SirWinner]

Avder,

I can support but a little rusty on the hotkeys.

Not very comfortable yet... Need some schooling on how to be a better SC2 player.

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One thing that Blizzard does very very well: Patch their games well beyond the life cycle of most gaming companies.

As a long time Computer Programmer for over 33 years, I really appreciate the effort.

[Avder]

Avder,

I can support but a little rusty on the hotkeys.

Not very comfortable yet... Need some schooling on how to be a better SC2 player.

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One thing that Blizzard does very very well: Patch their games well beyond the life cycle of most gaming companies.

As a long time Computer Programmer for over 33 years, I really appreciate the effort.

Are you using standard or grid for your hotkeys?

[snoopy]

Avder,

I can help, too. I have you on my friends list- I'll ping you when I see you online.

[Avder]

Neato.

[SirWinner]

Mostly use mouse clicks.

Know that I will have to learn to use the Shortcut Keys as well as setup groups of hit keys for squads.

It is learnable... but when I get done with all the hotkeys used during Software Development the last thing that comes to mind is learning more at game time.

Yes my fault.

[SirWinner]

Oops... double clicked the submit button!

SC2 ID and Character Code would be helpful Snoopy!

[Avder]

Mostly use mouse clicks.

This is basically item number one on the universal list of things to NOT do if you want to become a better starcraft two player.

Here, watch this video:

I should be on and playing sometime tomorrow. glad the holidays are finally over.

[snoopy]

dsnoopy:360

[SirWinner]

Avder,

Thanks for the link to the video.

Grid looks like a great idea for keyboard layout.

Will take a lot of play testing to get comfortable with that.

Thanks again,
SirWinner

[SirWinner]

Happy a great year of Gaming in 2011!

[Ferno]

Lordraven: the only pre-rendered cinematics are the already ingame footage captured and played on vidscreens.

everything else is done with the engine in real time.

[Avder]

Sorry to anyone whos been waiting for me to get online or anything.

I lost a drive in my RAID-5 Array and am currently awaiting replacement of the drive. My plan is to convert it into a RAID 1+0 array once the replacement and the drive I am going to order both arrive, as well as a very large standalone media-only drive.

Performance under degraded RAID-5 is...well its terrible, but not totally unbearable. Its just I have a lot of other stuff to do, as well as I'm just plain nervous with the array degraded and all.

Also Grid doesnt take long to get used to at all, except for using 'T' to attack.

[TOR_LordRaven]

Lordraven: the only pre-rendered cinematics are the already ingame footage captured and played on vidscreens.

everything else is done with the engine in real time.

Yes I know.
in-game = game engine
pre-rendered = movie quality

You can tell the difference from one system to another with the "in-game" cut scenes. The prerendered ones of course don't care about your hardware.