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Let me start this off with a little back-story. I, like many people here, started playing Starcraft way back when it was released. The difference is I didn't play that long; I played until perhaps a year or so after Brood War had been released then every couple years I'd pick it back up for a bit. I was always more in to RPG games, Diablo 1/2 killed many hours for me as did other similar games. That isn’t to say I didn’t like Starcraft, I loved it. I was just terrible. I tend to give up on things quickly if I don’t feel I’m doing as well as I should be. I would play ladder games and get destroyed, seeing my record go down constantly led me to make more accounts but none ever stuck because I just couldn’t get the hang of it. So I quit.
Until about 3 years ago I had no idea how HUGE Starcraft had gotten as an e-Sport. By this time I was playing WoW (boo! Hiss! I know) and I found out about the Starcraft scene while watching WoW Arenas. I ended up getting in to the tournaments over in Korea, especially the GOM Intel Classics because of the fact that they had English commentary. I still remembered the units and how they worked but I had never seen them put to such use. Watching a Protoss player wipe out an entire army with amazing Storms blew my mind; I remember having a control group of High Templars, using Psy Storm and they’d all storm in the same spot. Seeing how these players managed to control armies was amazing, I ended up watching more Starcraft than actual sports (I’m a huge hockey/football/basketball fan) and I even got friends and my brother in to it.
When the Starcraft 2 beta came out I ended up getting a key and I probably played 4 games. The exact same thing was happening that happened when I was a kid; I felt overwhelmed. After watching so much Starcraft I felt like I had a really solid understanding of the meta game (even if it was shifting in SC2) but I just couldn’t actually do everything I had to make it work. I immediately got frustrated and stopped.
So Starcraft 2 has been out for several months now, I didn’t get it right away. About a week before Blizzcon I decided I wanted to play, at the very least finish the campaign. The GSL also had a lot to do with me wanting to play. I played through the campaign on normal (what a baller!) and decided I was going to give the ladder a bit of a try, again. I went 3-2 in my placement matches, watching the replays I really should’ve won the 4th game but a lack of scouting caused me to lose, and I ended up getting placed in Silver. I started off as Terran as that was what I played in SC1. However I kept playing mirror matches, I felt like everyone was playing Terran. I decided I wanted to switch but I had no interest in Protoss and Zerg seemed too hard, too many things that I could screw up. So for a few more days I was playing Terran and just not really enjoying it. Finally I decided “screw it” and I played a few games against AI to get the hang of Zerg. Now I’ve played the majority of my ladder games as Zerg.
I’m now 38-41 in Silver. I know it’s not terrible but at the same time I’m really unhappy with it. I feel that when I lose I made some bad/stupid mistakes and when I win it has more to do with my opponent’s skill than it does my own, I rarely feel like I outplayed someone. The stupid thing is that I know where a lot of my mistakes are. I get my first expansion quickly but then I’ll sit on two bases forever, I’m afraid of getting the 3rd expo. I tech up too slowly a lot of the time and I forget injections a lot. Then there’s always the obvious mistake of not knowing when to stop droning. I know I make these mistakes and I always think to myself “Okay, next game I’ve got to do this and that better” and then in the next game I get so overwhelmed doing one thing that I forget about what I should also be doing. I know the only way to get better is to keep playing but I hate losing, so I try to watch a lot of replays/VoDs and read tons of threads on TL more than actually playing. For every hour I’ve played in the last month I’ve probably watched 5-6 hours of Day9, PsyStarcraft and various replays.
I feel like I’m making things harder on myself by playing Zerg. I love the race which is why I’m still playing it and perhaps this is just a case of “the grass is greener” but I feel that some of the things that make Zerg unique are the things that make it a lot more complicated. Forgetting Injects not only means you have fewer units but your minerals will be harder to spend. Not spreading creep, especially vT or vP, does nothing but hurt your chances. Not knowing when it’s safe to drone up instead of building units or vice versa, either you have units sitting there doing nothing (another mistake in itself) and you’re broke because you don’t have enough Drones mining or you find out how ineffective drones are at defending your base. My overlords tend to sit in my base in a huge group because I’m worried about using them for spotting around the map because I don’t want to lose them, I know they should be sitting over various expansions dropping creep or sitting on the edges of my opponent’s base to scout.
I want to get better, obviously. I just get frustrated with my own performance and wonder if I’m making things harder by playing Zerg. I’m going to keep at it, what’s the point of playing if I’m not using the race I enjoy? I just wanted some avenue to vent and I’m sorry the “back-story” ended up being the majority of this post.
Thanks (and sorry, it feels very wall-of-textish) if you actually read it all.
 
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Papua New Guinea152 Posts
Well, here's my take on things.
The main conflict is coming from the tension between wanting to enjoy/have fun with the game and actually winning games.
If you find Zerg rewarding to play, I say go for it. Since you said that even though playing terran might get you wins, you still feel unsatisfied because it feels like the opponent made too many mistakes or you made simple mistakes (when you lose).
The most important thing (to me) is to have fun, even if doing so means putting in more effort so I can do the things I would like to do in game (for instance, for you it would be playing zerg well). To put things into perspective, none of us (for the most part) are going to become pro gamers, so it's better to enjoy the game for what it is. That's what I think anyway.
I feel like if I'm having fun the wins will come naturally.
GL HF !!!
edit: to further clarify, say you had a 70% winrate with terran but you didn't enjoy playing it. now imagine you're playing zerg but have a lower winrate. if you enjoy zerg you will feel better about putting the time and energy into improving your zerg, and eventually your zerg games will get as good as your terran games. at some point you will have as high a winrate with zerg as you will with terran. keep at it, you will get better!!! and it will be worth it too!!!
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Ya I too also spend alot more time reading and watching starcraft than actually play the game, but mostly because of time constraints. Sometimes I wonder how pro players do so well when they switch races for fun and such and still play good, and its probably cause just they have so much experience.
Since I don't have that much time to ladder, I just seem to use alot of willpower to win. And it sort of works in that playing smarter and keeping my thoughts straight gives me the fastest improvement rather than just playing a bunch of games mindlessly.
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What I actually would suggest would be playing some other games to build up some speed, and form there switch over into sc2, I played HoN and Dota before sc2, and the speed i gained from playing them has translated pretty well over to sc2, I went back and played some hon the other day, and found myself spamming drag boxes xP
Anyway, what i mean to say is that if you feel frustrated with sc2, focus on improving as a pc gamer overall which will help your sc2 indirectly
and actually, I think drones are the best worker because of that hp regen they get =/
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I actually played HoN a bit. It was a lot of fun but the community is terrrrrible. People there all think they're godly and if you make the slightest mistake and you get lynched. So I didn't play too much.
As far as Drones I didn't mean to say they're bad, it was just my "witty" way of saying they can't defend your base when you have no units.
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Don't play terran if you don't enjoy playing it. But you said the reason you didn't want to play terran was because of getting too many TvTs. There are a lot more zergs on the ladder now.
I would advise you to just play the race you like and enjoy playing, and don't care so much about winning. I chose to play protoss in BW and SC2 because I think they are cool with their futuristic technology and they are righteous and good and whatnot. Even though I find some matchups to be hard (cough..PvT), I would never think about switching simply because I like the race.
And you should be matched up against people your own skill level, so don't worry about winning and just play for fun. If you want to get better, maybe look up some builds and practice them thoroughly.
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Its not that I didn't enjoy Terran, I just didn't enjoy that everyone was playing Terran from my view. I honestly don't see THAT many Zergs in Silver, there's actually a pretty solid balance between races. I do enjoy Zerg, I'm just pretty terrible at some of the key Zerg "things" imo. I forget Injects so much, its frustrating.
I know I shouldn't be so concerned with winning or losing, that in the end its about improving. I've always hated losing in anything, though. And just deciding to ignore that is a lot easier said than done.
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