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Everyone knows that starting in Starcraft can be a bit overwhelming at first. Build orders, micro, macro, maps, those little things you couldn't have learned by yourself. There's alot of knowledge out there about the game and how to play. How hard is it to assimilate and, more importantly, to apply it in game?
That's where I come in. Personally, I've only started to play SC seriously a week ago or so. It's... Overwhelming, to say the least. In this modest blog, I'll write of things I will learn and more important of my errors and how I can improve from them.
For the moment, this is more of a spur of the moment thing, though hopefully I will keep up as I get better, stronger, faster, harder! ;D
  
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United States24799 Posts
Chronicling your start in competitive SC is certainly a good thing to consider doing... most of us don't even remember what it was like when we were complete newbies (dunno maybe I still am one).
But there is a chronic (triple pun intended??) problem with bloggers making a blog talking about what they will be blogging about.
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Turning the vast amounts of information out there into actual in-game skills as a beginner is one of the things that has plagued newcomers as far as I can ever remember. To try and soften the harshness of entering SC is an amicable goal. (I'm serious). Many before you have tried and failed. I hope you stick to this so other newcomers can learn from your mistakes and breakthroughs from the perspective of someone at their skill level.
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add [CPL]TheAntZ on iccup If you wanna massgame and maybe get some basic gameplay tips 
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Yeah, first starting out is incredibly hard. The most frustrating part is that you will basically never win in the beginning.
When sc2 first came out, I think a lot of people started playing broodwar to prepare but then a lot of them quit because they couldn't win and cuz the interface is so old.
If you haven't played campaign, I recommend doing that first.
If you begin laddering with protoss and just focus on macro, you'll be winning some games on iccup in no time.
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Hahaha, I remember when I just started playing iccup, my build orders consisted of 2 fac vs protoss and 2 rax vs zerg and 2 proxy port wraith vs T. My apm was around 100 too, so needless to say I didn't do very well at all 
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On February 08 2010 12:44 JadeFist wrote:
Yeah, first starting out is incredibly hard. The most frustrating part is that you will basically never win in the beginning.
When sc2 first came out, I think a lot of people started playing broodwar to prepare but then a lot of them quit because they couldn't win and cuz the interface is so old.
If you haven't played campaign, I recommend doing that first.
If you begin laddering with protoss and just focus on macro, you'll be winning some games on iccup in no time.
THIS GUY IS FROM THE FUTURE!
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Iccup IS harsh =\ lost my first ~200 ish games but when I started really grinding and shiz i really started getting better. If you wanna massgame you can add me :D nub4ever[bsg] I'm A D Terran
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United States24799 Posts
If you are lucky enough to get someone to train you to borderline D/D- then you can probably join an East clan or something like that to get a lot of mass games without having to ladder. Then, after practicing with people of varied levels/styles you can get more towards D+ which makes the ladder a more suitable place to practice. Some people would jump right to ICCUP... but I wouldn't personally.
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On February 08 2010 13:03 wolfy4033 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 08 2010 12:44 JadeFist wrote:
Yeah, first starting out is incredibly hard. The most frustrating part is that you will basically never win in the beginning.
When sc2 first came out, I think a lot of people started playing broodwar to prepare but then a lot of them quit because they couldn't win and cuz the interface is so old.
If you haven't played campaign, I recommend doing that first.
If you begin laddering with protoss and just focus on macro, you'll be winning some games on iccup in no time. THIS GUY IS FROM THE FUTURE!
replace "came out" with " announced." :p
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Just don't get disheartened and stop playing. I've recently started playing SC again and am well just terrible at the moment..
Add no_chett if you want to get some games against someone who woeful.
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The best advice I can give you would be to get in a cycle. Start by playing a few games, then go watch the replays, analyze the game, figure out what it was you did wrong, figure out what you are going to do better next time you are in the scenario, and then apply it. If something is owning you and you can't figure out what to do about it, seek help on liquipedia or the strategy forums. Don't be afraid to try different strategies, but that being said, sometimes its a good idea to host a bunch of games called 1v1 D <map> you P or whatever if you want to practice a specific aspect of XvP.
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PM me if you want to win games. I am bad. I play only enough to be perpetually out of practice.
EDIT: I looked at that pathetic one line and decided that I should provide a little wisdom, such as it is, along with it. A lot of people seem to think that the best way to improve your mechanics is to play a lot. This is true, but not strictly so. If you simply play a lot, without a lot of effort to systematically improve, you will not see the results you expect. I suggest the following tips, certainly not in their order of importance:- 1) Spam. A lot of players have the big problem of being too slow. Spamming doesn't increase your effective speed, but it does increase the speed at which your hands move, and as day9 has said (paraphrasing) 'at least you know you should be doing things when you're spamming some hotkeys, eventually those actions will start to become useful.'
- 2) Use the tools available. Chaoslauncher has a tool that chimes when your APM drops below a certain level. It also displays game time and apm on the screen, which can be used to help with your build timings and not letting your apm drop off, respectively. Use bwchart. That sucker is about as helpful as actually watching your replays. You can see if you missed using a hotkey (hotkeys are god), see what upgrades, buildings, units, etc you got. These things are very valuable, and as you go along I'm sure you will find them to be so.
- 3) Find people at your level. You can certainly improve by getting your ass kicked over and over, but playing at your level allows you some leeway to get comfortable with aspects of your build that you would not be able to practice against someone just rocking you. It is very nice to LAN with friends. Then you can discuss what happened, give one another suggestions, and generally have a good time.
- 4) Stick with it. You will periodically find yourself hitting plateaus, where you have developed, but then have trouble improving. This is totally normal, and you simply need to play through them.
Like I said, I'm not a good player, but I have experience getting beyond the totally lost noob phase, and that's what this advice is for.
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Hong Kong20321 Posts
On February 08 2010 13:03 wolfy4033 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 08 2010 12:44 JadeFist wrote:
Yeah, first starting out is incredibly hard. The most frustrating part is that you will basically never win in the beginning.
When sc2 first came out, I think a lot of people started playing broodwar to prepare but then a lot of them quit because they couldn't win and cuz the interface is so old.
If you haven't played campaign, I recommend doing that first.
If you begin laddering with protoss and just focus on macro, you'll be winning some games on iccup in no time. THIS GUY IS FROM THE FUTURE!
hahaha made me lol
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i havn't played SC for a long while now and I have the urges to get back on the horse again but its so intimidating to start riding again~ Something really dumb to say about a video game but it feels like the truth to me. You just gotta give 'er without backing down while keeping an open mind about what works and what you need to change. There is no magical way to simply be better than you are but with research and good mental planning (understanding the game before you play) you can improve on mechanical errors really quickly. So just go for it. Stuff like micro and multitask get better over time through repetition so my advice to you is to learn builds and understand the strategies you are enacting. This means counters and adaptions to whats actually happening; the rest is practice and doing it better with less mistakes.
PM me here on tl if you ever want to play sometime, any games I play help me and i'm afraid of the scary 2010 bw players.
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Most of my problem right now is getting my speed up AND being more agressive. I swear, some friends tell me I'm playing it like Sim City :X
THough through IRC, I'm playing practice games with someone. And as an obvious masochist, I mostly practice TvP :|
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Netherlands4527 Posts
fuck watching replays of your own games, make a few close friends, talk about the game, play each other, inform each other of cool new strats you found and have fun.
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EPT
