EPTWe now return you your irregularly scheduled blog post. Thank you for your patience.
So, as mentioned above, I'm currently a D- player. I don't play very regularly, I seem to have lost whatever feel I ever had for the game, and frankly I'm frustrated. Furthermore, I don't have that much time to practice. So, I am going to provide a long-winded description of the situation, and then ask a few simple questions. Deal?
Long-Winded Description
A. The unimportant (read: personal) part. Being an account of my history with Starcraft and reasons for failure at it.
+ Show Spoiler +
There once was a teenager growing up in a family which had decided that video games were somewhere between "evil" and a waste of time. Naturally, he was interested in them. For some reason the family had always had a computer even though video games were bad, and after playing Starcraft at a friend's house, he went out and bought the game. Which he got away with somehow, probably because he was the family's computer "expert" and only played late at night when the homework was done.
At some point he ran across battlereports.com and eventually heard of the pro scene. Boxer vs joyo on Paradoxxx, the iloveoov goes valks vs YellOw game, Boxer vs Legionnaire on whatever that map is called - these were the games that introduced me to pro starcraft. Unfortunately, the more I watched and read, the less I played. My previously (then) D+ish skill (I could 9/10 gate!) disappeared.
Then came college. Oops. I'm a nerd at heart and like knowing stuff, so between that and a girlfriend and sort of having a social life, the Starcraft sort of got dropped. That, and all the other SC players I knew were either money-mappers or worse than me (really small college), and I had already had dislike of playing either type bred into me.
A year ago - well, 16 months - I graduated college, and with a little free time looking for a job, started playing again, started reading teamliquid, and got overwhelmed. Stork? Flash? Bisu? Who were these people? I sort of remembered sAviOr, but as I was a Protoss player, it wasn't a fond memory. At any rate, I began working a little bit, mostly on macro. I bumped my previously 45-ish APM up to about 60. I learned basic Protoss macro (I could 10/15 gate semi-successfully and do a decent FE). I hit D+.
Then I got a job - with long hours. I got interested in Diplomacy, found an online site, and wasted a lot of time scheming there. I watched a bunch of anime. When I was involved with Starcraft, I was watching - or discussing - not playing. That's been the case for about the last year, and I've returned more thoroughly than ever to the ranks of the D-, especially with my (misguided?) attempt to switch to Terran.
Right now it's not that I can't read a guide thread. There's this problem. As far as I can tell, all these guides are written with the premise, "Be competent, and have nothing else to focus on. Now go spend a lot of time playing, and this will help you get better." But guess what? Today this game is way too complicated to pick up by "just playing a lot", especially when I don't have the time to "just play a lot".
At some point he ran across battlereports.com and eventually heard of the pro scene. Boxer vs joyo on Paradoxxx, the iloveoov goes valks vs YellOw game, Boxer vs Legionnaire on whatever that map is called - these were the games that introduced me to pro starcraft. Unfortunately, the more I watched and read, the less I played. My previously (then) D+ish skill (I could 9/10 gate!) disappeared.
Then came college. Oops. I'm a nerd at heart and like knowing stuff, so between that and a girlfriend and sort of having a social life, the Starcraft sort of got dropped. That, and all the other SC players I knew were either money-mappers or worse than me (really small college), and I had already had dislike of playing either type bred into me.
A year ago - well, 16 months - I graduated college, and with a little free time looking for a job, started playing again, started reading teamliquid, and got overwhelmed. Stork? Flash? Bisu? Who were these people? I sort of remembered sAviOr, but as I was a Protoss player, it wasn't a fond memory. At any rate, I began working a little bit, mostly on macro. I bumped my previously 45-ish APM up to about 60. I learned basic Protoss macro (I could 10/15 gate semi-successfully and do a decent FE). I hit D+.
Then I got a job - with long hours. I got interested in Diplomacy, found an online site, and wasted a lot of time scheming there. I watched a bunch of anime. When I was involved with Starcraft, I was watching - or discussing - not playing. That's been the case for about the last year, and I've returned more thoroughly than ever to the ranks of the D-, especially with my (misguided?) attempt to switch to Terran.
Right now it's not that I can't read a guide thread. There's this problem. As far as I can tell, all these guides are written with the premise, "Be competent, and have nothing else to focus on. Now go spend a lot of time playing, and this will help you get better." But guess what? Today this game is way too complicated to pick up by "just playing a lot", especially when I don't have the time to "just play a lot".
B. The Pertinent Information
So after all that I'm a D- player, with about 60-70 APM and very little playing time. If I were to become really dedicated, I could put in two hours, maybe, four or five days a week, maybe. But I don't want to remain incompetent forever.
There's one further consideration that might help you answer: my preferred play-style. Tn chess, I call myself a tactical player because I prefer focus on short-term goals rather than trying to guide the overall flow of the game. Of course, I've also played chess long enough and seriously enough that my understanding of that metagame is good enough to let me do this relatively safely. I can play a standard opening and adapt as needed - but this is something I distinctly lack when it comes to Starcraft.
About the only thing I can say here is that (as much as possible in this macro age) I prefer low-econ play, as it keeps the equation simple enough for me to deal with. Give my opponent three bases, and he wins on the basis of my indecision (and poor macro).
Right now, see, every time I play I lose badly, and while I can look at the replay and sort of know why I lost, I don't know what I should do instead.
Simple Questions
1. Which race should I focus on?
2. What are the best 2 or 3 basic builds to focus on for each matchup with that race?
3. Give me the top 3 things to work on and the best way to practice each.
And the (important) one that's not so simple:
How do I go about learning the metagame? Not just "knowing", being able to follow a pro game, but really learning, being able to recognize stuff myself when playing. In chess, I played through tons of high-level games. A reasonable corollary would seem to be watching a lot of replays, but how do you watch a replay to actually learn? There's no way to "set up the board" and play out the possible variations, that I know of, and I'm not good enough to do it in my head.
Thanks for the help!
