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I'm hosting the first weekly meeting for my high school's Real Time Strategy Club tomorrow. It's a huge deal to me, especially considering how difficult it was to get this club approved -.-; While I had originally intended to have a SC1 focus, I realize that that's impossible given the relative ratio of SC2 to SC1 players these days. For the first meeting I'm planning to get everyone's contact info along with ICCUP/SC2 Ladder ranks, as well as go over the general structure of future meetings.
If my adviser lets me use the projector//whiteboard, I'm planning on doing lectures or playing some highlight reels during meetings when there isn't much going on.
Organizing tournaments seems like a bit of a stretch right now, as there will probably be people of all skill levels or people who don't even own the game.
I realize that what I plan on doing sounds really cliche and trite, so I'm open to suggestions as to what should happen during said meetings.
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this might be the first SC related club i've heard of in high school. good luck with that, sounds like it'll be fun. if i were in your club, i'd start off with a history of BW
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Oh man, do I know what you mean. I'm doing something similar in university.....
I have no idea what your player-base is like, but I know for mine, like 1/3 or less actually know what ICCUP is..... I'm not sure if lecture-style meetings are the way to go..... But, then again, it'll depend on the group you're working with.....
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It'll probably come down heavily on the skill level of the people who show up. If it's lower skilled people, probably holding fundamentals discussion and basic strategies will suffice for now. If it's higher skilled people, it can be treated like a debate forum, arguing over the ups and downs of BOs and stuff like that.
I see a club like that more or less an IRL version of a forum like TL.
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If you're calling it an RTS club then that's not actually game-specific. You should arrange tournaments and events based on what's popular within the club as well as just starcraft. I dunno what people play in high school these days.
Obviously during the meetings you should play games! Get together little prizes for people who do the best each day, or made the most inventive play. Play older games- get people having goes at AoE or TA or C&C, they're all fun and you hit a wider audience. Give some tips- I don't think a lecture structure would work very well, though. People aren't joining this club to be lectured. <_<
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I hate to say it, but playing highlight videos and holding lectures might not be the best way to keep the attention of people -_- The average person is just gonna want to play, so I would look into some way of facilitating that, i.e set up lans ect.
Unless the demographics of your school are crazily out of line of anything I've seen, I would suggest keeping pretty low key- if you set up for some sort of elitist, Diamond, Teamliquid user only club it's gonna die pretty hard I imagine. Also, a craaaazy amount of people own SC2 (well in North America anyway, idk where you live)- so setting up play times wouldn't be to tough I imagine.
I think it's pretty cool you're taking the initiative to do this though, Good Luck! :D
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i agree with Tracil, you can't just assume everyone who joined the club plays SC2/BW it'll be a huge turnoff if the focus is on that
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You are in China? Wow, nice job on getting the club approved.
If you are worried about people having too broad of a skill spectrum, you can have days where you get some old (possibly unknown) RTS, install it on people's computers and play it among each other. It's not likely that anyone will be good at it, or has ever played it. Compete with each other for fun. Then discuss its gameplay from a SC players' perspective, discuss its viability as an e-sport (hypothetically), talk about its strategic elements (or lack of). Then apply anything you learned to SC. There - you have something to do that isn't just SC2 matches, and you actually learn about a new RTS!
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If you are a college student in NA, you could have signed up for the CSL and that would've been fine for the time being. The starcraft team at my school, though, had to revert to online meetings with sc2 though because we always focused more on playing. Maybe that would be an option?
In general, just make it a thing where people get together and play. You can do special workshops every once in awhile. Don't try to "teach" people how to play.
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On October 12 2010 14:13 Hier wrote: You are in China? Wow, nice job on getting the club approved.
If you are worried about people having too broad of a skill spectrum, you can have days where you get some old (possibly unknown) RTS, install it on people's computers and play it among each other. It's not likely that anyone will be good at it, or has ever played it. Compete with each other for fun. Then discuss its gameplay from a SC players' perspective, discuss its viability as an e-sport (hypothetically), talk about its strategic elements (or lack of). Then apply anything you learned to SC. There - you have something to do that isn't just SC2 matches, and you actually learn about a new RTS! I'm currently living in the states rofl O_o.
The problem with playing StarCraft during meetings is that we can't really play multilayer due to the lack of LAN (thanks blizzard)... so the only way that would be possible would be with SC1.
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On October 12 2010 14:26 Loser777 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 12 2010 14:13 Hier wrote: You are in China? Wow, nice job on getting the club approved.
If you are worried about people having too broad of a skill spectrum, you can have days where you get some old (possibly unknown) RTS, install it on people's computers and play it among each other. It's not likely that anyone will be good at it, or has ever played it. Compete with each other for fun. Then discuss its gameplay from a SC players' perspective, discuss its viability as an e-sport (hypothetically), talk about its strategic elements (or lack of). Then apply anything you learned to SC. There - you have something to do that isn't just SC2 matches, and you actually learn about a new RTS! I'm currently living in the states rofl O_o. The problem with playing StarCraft during meetings is that we can't really play multilayer due to the lack of LAN (thanks blizzard)... so the only way that would be possible would be with SC1.
Oh, your name tag says China. I assumed from there...
Well as I said, try playing an RTS nobody has played before, or something old like AoE1, Red Alert, Tiberian Sun. Unless you REALLY must stick to SC for some reason, like picking a club name that would solely get it past the approval of your school.
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On October 12 2010 14:26 Loser777 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 12 2010 14:13 Hier wrote: You are in China? Wow, nice job on getting the club approved.
If you are worried about people having too broad of a skill spectrum, you can have days where you get some old (possibly unknown) RTS, install it on people's computers and play it among each other. It's not likely that anyone will be good at it, or has ever played it. Compete with each other for fun. Then discuss its gameplay from a SC players' perspective, discuss its viability as an e-sport (hypothetically), talk about its strategic elements (or lack of). Then apply anything you learned to SC. There - you have something to do that isn't just SC2 matches, and you actually learn about a new RTS! I'm currently living in the states rofl O_o. The problem with playing StarCraft during meetings is that we can't really play multilayer due to the lack of LAN (thanks blizzard)... so the only way that would be possible would be with SC1.
You can certainly still do multiplayer. Its not quite as simple as in SC1; but it's not complex either. As long as you guys exhange character ID's you can then add them to party and create a game, or just create a game and send a request to join. It still works, so don't let that be a setback to just lecturing or whatever, instead of also having the fun of playing games.
I'm guessing that most of the people joining an RTS club are there to play some RTS socially, not to hardcore learn new strategies and how to play the game on a high level. If they already are at that point, then they probably won't be learning much from any instruction bases format anyway.
TL;DR - You can do multiplayer with charcater ID's. New players probably want to play/socialize not learn, experienced players will probably know history and most of what your going to teach.
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So basically the first meeting went pretty well and I got wayyy more people than I thought would attend the first meeting. The main twist is that not everyone owns SC2, and everyone agreed that we should teach SC1 instead O_o. It's great in the sense that SC1 is a much more refined game and "standard play" is easier to teach, but I'm sure we'll be alienating some SC2 fanatics. Bnet for SC1 has kind of stagnated with the proliferation of hacks and iCCup would be well, difficult to say the least for someone who has just picked up the game. I guess it's up to how fast people learn but it's sad that we don't have a solid ladder for completely new players to practice on anymore.
People also wanted to do things like rank everyone in the club (pretty ridiculous considering at least 1/2 the club has basically never played StarCraft)
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konadora
Singapore66063 Posts
lol wow this sounds better than keionbu
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On October 13 2010 12:20 konadora wrote: lol wow this sounds better than keionbu Unfortunately no after-school tea time
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UNI? BRANDON SAID TOO MANY PEOPLE SHOWED UP
YOU MAKE ME PROUD AS A MEMBER OF THE CLASS OF '10.
Dude. Ask Brandon. Friend me on Facebook. I want to see what's up.
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Woah, did I just read a blog of yours and realize that you went to my school?
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United States10328 Posts
On October 13 2010 13:35 .Aar wrote: UNI? BRANDON SAID TOO MANY PEOPLE SHOWED UP
YOU MAKE ME PROUD AS A MEMBER OF THE CLASS OF '10.
Dude. Ask Brandon. Friend me on Facebook. I want to see what's up.
whoa is this university high in ... california
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I am right now in the same situation. I plan to make a Starcraft club at my school and I'm glad to see what others are saying.
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