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I was never the serious RTS player. I remember waiting outside of my local game store to buy Starcraft when it first came out. I cut school that day to be the first one in the store to get a copy. I still have fond memories of throwing the disc in my 4x CD-ROM drive and firing up the game. Having played Warcraft and Warcraft 2, I wasn't completely new to RTS, but it was the first time I was introduced to the concept of playing against other players. Battle.net was a revolution as far as I was concerned and soon enough, I was playing 7v1 Comp Stomps on Hunters all day with a couple of UMS games in between. I also played against other players in team games on Hunters or BGH, but it was never really a serious affair except the occasional game against someone I actually knew.
It was a different time in Battle.net back then. Pro gaming was something I never really heard of and iconic players were really not much more to me than the occasional mention of Grr or someone else in a battle report. I went on to play countless other games since then from FPS games to MMO's. It was only years later when I somehow found myself back in the Starcraft scene which was now very different from the one I had left. I discovered that people played games outside of Hunters/BGH. Private ladders such as WGT and PGTour offered a new side of the game to me and renewed my interest in it.
I never did get past D+ now that I look back on it. I imagine some of it was just a lack of talent for this kind of gaming in general and a lot of it was just my tremendous interest in watching broadcasted games and VOD's. There really was nothing more fun than watching two top level players duking it out on the screen with the feeling of omniscience I got with knowing everything that was going on. I could probably tell you just about every viable build and strategy on any professional BW map used in the past 5 years and I was really confident in this knowledge and "understanding" of the game.
When Starcraft 2 was released I never went out to buy the game. I simply continued my pattern of watching and analyzing through observations. I did plenty of theorycrafting and criticizing with gameplay, units, balance, maps, etc. Despite my initial reservations about the game as a spectator sport, I found myself enjoying the streams I saw and it eventually convinced me that maybe this is a game that I'd enjoy so a few days ago I went out and actually bought it. That's when my whole world fell apart.
Simply put, I don't know shit about this game. I suck at it so hard. I suck beyond sucking. Granted, it's been quite a while since I've played any RTS (I haven't touched Starcraft in at least a year), but I quickly found myself fumbling across the keyboard and forgetting everything I would consider to be so obvious while observing a game. I can't get rid of the constant uneasiness that hovers over me when I see the fog of war and I don't know what my opponent is doing. I could talk all day about spreading creep or injecting larvae, but the reality of sitting there and constantly remembering to do this stuff is really so daunting that I can't imagine how good players actually do this stuff regularly.
I'm currently placed in the Bronze league with a few atrocious games played so far and I've been playing custom games against the AI just to familiarize myself with the hotkeys (which by the way don't seem very intuitive at all compared to Brood War) and races. Honestly, after the first few games, I couldn't even settle on which race to play simply because I suck so much at all of them. I guess I decided to start this blog just to throw out this experience since I'm sure there are others that have been in the same shoes and probably more that will be in the future.
I'm done theorycrafting and talking about balance because 1 hour into actually sitting down and playing this game has opened my eyes to how little I actually know despite everything I watched on GSL, LiveStreams, Day9, etc. Hopefully I'll work my way up to some sort of respectable level, but honestly it seems like a daunting task right now. I'll throw updates as I progress. I suppose the first thing is going to be deciding on a race...
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If you think the hotkeys aren't intuitive, go into options and enable the Classic hotkey layout.
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The thing is that it looks like if I actually got used to it, the new hotkeys would be faster. It's just that they don't really make much sense to me right now aside from the fact that they're focused on the left side of the keyboard.
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Just hang in there, man. I never played starcraft in my life before WoL and my only previous RTS experience was messing around with AoE II when I was like 10. I instantly fell in love with it though, and 300 games later, I was promoted to diamond.
You already have the experience and theoretical knowledge, just play some more and learn how to apply that theory to the games you play. It'll get a lot easier once you become comfortable with the hotkeys and handle of the game. Start off easy and just learn one build order. not one per matchup, just pick a race and learn one single, generally good BO. that's what I did and it really helps since if you can execute it well, it doesn't matter that another BO wouldve been better for the situation. I think I played easily 100 games just 2 gate robo-ing against every race. It's all baby steps.
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I dunno... after reading your post, although I'm not completely sure, I believe you have a good grasp of tactics, but your problem lies in your understanding of strategy.
by tactics I mean like all the things having to do with micro, map positioning, using unit x is good against unit y, etc.
By strategy I mean the big picture of the game. Like... your goal is to destroy your enemy and to do that you need to focus on having a better economy and in the end defeat their army. These two goals are huge and note that everything you do needs to work towards these.
I'm curious what your thought process is during a game? Is it like - oh, here's my nexus I think I need to make probes and here's my gateway I think I need to make stalkers... because that's not the way you should be playing the game. Formulate a plan (whether it's a build order, or just an abstract plan), see what your opponent is doing, calculate if your current plan is suitable, and if not, modify it.
If you forget to do things, practice with games where you focus almost entirely on one aspect of the game.
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Well so far I feel like I definitely do go into the game with a general game plan and a build in mind. My main problem in the beginning of the game really seems to do with my timings and scouting. I get supply blocked pretty often and I have a tendency to panic when I get thrown off my plan. The issue is really only compounded by my inferior mechanics and also due in part to my anxiety disorder, which makes me constantly nervous due to the fog of war. Right now I'm really focused on getting a good feel for the game and dealing with in-game pressure. I think I'll perform significantly better once I can get my nerves under control enough to think through the games in a somewhat intelligent manner. It'd be nice to have someone friends that play, but nobody I know plays SC2 so it's a bit lonely to be honest.
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Man, you must be like, my doppleganger!
It was the same with me... albit 5 years after.
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EPT
