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I don't really remember anyone teaching me how to play an RTS game. I was probably around 17 years old when I received a warcraft demo (yes the original, not war2) in a parallel port cable bundle package. I loaded it up and enjoyed the game a lot. A few years later I was at an EB and saw that war2 was soon to be released and remembered how much fun the original demo was. So as soon as it came out, I purchased it and that was the beginning of many hours of RTS gaming. I certainly didn't figure everything out initially, but the basic ideas of mining, making units, the tech tree, etc...came pretty easy. It wasn't until I started playing competitively on Case's Ladder that I started learning the deeper strategies and build orders (I still have the first ever warcraft 2 build orders sheet created by Meklarian on a floppy disk and a hard copy printed out on my dot matrix printer).
Anyway, my daughter is 13 years old and has always been a bit of a tomboy. Upon the suggestion from my wife that I teach my daughter to play starcraft2, I didn't think she would be interested nor did I think she had the focus needed in such a demanding game when it comes to speed and multitasking. I was right at first as she said she wasn't interested. But since then, her cousin and uncle (same ages as her) have both gotten into SC2, so I think she feels a bit left out and asked me the other week to teach her SC2.
First session was a disaster as my 5 1/2 month old son was crying and whining through the whole lesson. As I was teaching her the progression of the game from initial mining to what buildings do what and what units are good for what, I realized how complicated the game can be for someone with no RTS experience. I knew she was overwhelmed.
Any ideas from people out there who have maybe done something similar? I was toying with the idea of taking her through the tutorial, but I honestly don't remember how good it was. What's the best approach for teaching someone with no RTS experience how to play SC2?
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Campaign on easy mode is probably the best bet.
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I agree with mucker, I mean yes SCII is a bit complex if you throw everything in at once, but I also would claim that it's easier to pick up bit by bit. Rome wasn't built in a day. Alexander didn't Conquer in a few short battles. Progamers don't develop overnight.
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On September 10 2011 07:10 mucker wrote:
Campaign on easy mode is probably the best bet.
Definitely this, maybe some of the tutorials too. Good luck!
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Simply encourage her to spend all her money and make tons of stuff. I don't think she aspires to be truly competitive. So I suggest you mostly sit back and don't offer a lot of suggestions. However, do suggest that she spends her minerals and gas. Whenever they cross above 500 or 1,000 encourage her to spend it all.
Make 5 gateways, make 10 starports, make 3 hatcheries, make 100 roaches.
Spending all your money in starcraft is quite difficult. Encouraging her to do so gives her some super basic things that RTS require (having a huge army) while letting her have the freedom to make whatever she wants. Thus, she is learning some by mostly goofing around.
I think if you tried to do things like learn a build order or something extremely refined she would grow bored and frustrated. Let her goof around but encourage her to goof around with LOTS of stuff.
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After getting a few total noobs to diamond it think its best for people to start vs a computer like green tea or something similar so they can get a feel for how to click on things and what does what. Plus its a really repetitive thing to play a comp so they get to understand what time means in an RTS and so on.
Alternatively you could 4 gate her a hundred times and teach her to defend and micro but that may get old for you.
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On September 10 2011 07:19 Smurphy wrote:
Simply encourage her to spend all her money and make tons of stuff. I don't think she aspires to be truly competitive. So I suggest you mostly sit back and don't offer a lot of suggestions. However, do suggest that she spends her minerals and gas. Whenever they cross above 500 or 1,000 encourage her to spend it all.
Make 5 gateways, make 10 starports, make 3 hatcheries, make 100 roaches.
Spending all your money in starcraft is quite difficult. Encouraging her to do so gives her some super basic things that RTS require (having a huge army) while letting her have the freedom to make whatever she wants. Thus, she is learning some by mostly goofing around.
I think if you tried to do things like learn a build order or something extremely refined she would grow bored and frustrated. Let her goof around but encourage her to goof around with LOTS of stuff.
I think you're aiming way too high think NO RTS experience as in she wouldn't even understand what and how to mine, to build stuff etc... and yeah as people have said campaign, tutorials, also just playing a comp on very easy since it'll never (I'm pretty sure it literally NEVER) attacks and you can just screw around figure out how to build stuff play around with a bit of every unit which is more fun for noobs and more.
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Canada11450 Posts
Not SC2 specifically, but I've taught quite a few people SCBW, several who had no RTS experience at all (Is it kinda like street fighter?)
It varies though. Some people love playing campaigns because of the missions and storyline. And this I find useful because it usually introduces and highlights a unit for that mission. Now the problem with SC2's campaign is there's all those extra units, so I suspect it may actually be more difficult, or at least at the later stages. But at the early stages, it limits the amount of things you can do so you can figure out the basics.
HOWEVER. I have found some people are not particularly interested in playing campaigns. Furthermore, our group was usually trying to start a LAN game and I was responsible for giving the crash course to the newbie therefore campaigns are rather time consuming.
In this case, I'd usually create a person vs 1 computer on very easy mode (and usually a different race then they are playing.) I would then walk them through a very loose build order. (I think I only mention 8 supply, get depot. Everything else is, ok we have enough money, let's make a factory- factory being priority in BW, ok we're going to run out of supply soon, let's make a couple depots, ok we're supply blocked and have too much money, let's research while waiting for depots to finish.) The goal was emphasize, workers, supply, making production facilities and creating a very basic army that could (at a low level) deal with most things. For beginners, I usually let them cue a second unit, but I always tell them why cuing is bad. However, when you're just starting, it can be a useful crutch.
I've taught a couple people by showing them all the tech paths and all the possible units you could get. However, I found they didn't remember anything and I'd have to reteach them anyways.
So in BW we'd start with our marines, a couple medics and get to tanks as fast as we can. And just get them to make tons of tanks because tanks are awesome and fun. And later on we might add in Goliaths. So at max we're dealing with 3-4 military units and have the ability to hit ground and air. Is it ideal? No. But they can get their heads around it. I ask them whether they want to learn any new units and usually they're fine with those 3-4. Later, they'll probably explore. With Protoss I'd get them to do zealot, dragoon, Carrier because those are pretty simple to deal with (reavers are slow and high templar too much apm.)
It's really hard to prepare new players for dealing with cloaked units. I tend to mention it in passing these days and then once they've played a couple times, they'll usually encounter some sort of cloaked unit and then I can show all the ways to deal with it.
I usually teach a small number of hotkeys. How to hotkey your armies and how to hotkey your central factory. (I also hotkey their cc's for them and will occasionally show the double tap with that.) Mind you, with multi--base selection I would think hotkeying buildings might actually be a must as it makes things even easier then all the clicking you'd have to do. I would rarely tell them about unit making hotkeys until maybe late game and all they were making were tanks. Just press 't'... although I guess it's 'o' in SC2. (I just change all SC2 hotkeys to BW for myself.)
After the first crash course game, I think I would get your daughter to play with her cousin and uncle on a comp stomp (computer numbers and difficulty geared to their level.) That's mainly how I learned SC: myself and 2 friends vs 2 computers and we'd die (we were so terrible). But it's the social dynamic of playing with other people that makes SC really fun for me. Later on they might want some to start some pvp'ing, but again I'd avoid the 1v1's. Better to do 2v2's with friends (and balance teams, create handicaps [terran no tank], 1v3 whatever it takes so that they can play a competitive game at their level and not one side get completely destroyed.
The other thing is don't worry too much if they do some really strange things. I taught one guy and he surpassed some of my friend's macroing in a couple weeks (and they played for casually for quite a few years.) But he eventually settled on pure goliaths, but just macro'ed like a boss. He did fine, but if he ever got cocky (this particular guy could get that way), I'd just pull out the storms. Eventually he balanced out.
I actually find if you teach new players from the beginning how to macro, they can become pretty scary beasts. They're quite open to that style of play vs people that have been playing casually over the years and are rather set in their ways.
I'm sure there's more I could say, but hopefully this is somewhat helpful.
Edit
Oh yes, I've also taught my little sister (14 years old) to play SC, but she had already played and enjoyed Age of Empires 2. I think it's so awesome!
Double Edit
One thing I've been thinking lately since I've found my old BW glossy tech-tree printout that this might be a useful thing to have lying around. (Did later SC2 games come with it? I can't recall if I got one with SC2.) If she's kinda into the game she might pick it up and figure out how the tech trees work a little more. I know I used to pour over those tech trees when I was I first started most of my RTS games.
Third Edit
No matter how simple you make, quite often people find sci fi buildings and units confusing and the game overwhelming. Even people with RTS experience. (I found it that way in 98 and never touched the game again till 07, much to my loss.) The buildings and resources are just nearly not that intuitive compared to Warcraft 2 or Age of Empires 2 where you get gold to buy soldiers and wood to make buildings. And footsoldiers come from barracks, archers from archery ranges, and knights from stables. I've found many new players are still overwhelmed and don't particularly like the game after the first time playing. (My second time in 07, I wanted to Age 2 instead.) However, by the 2nd or 3rd go around playing the same race, dealing with the same 3-4 units, prioritizing the same basic upgrades (siege mode, and attack/armour upgrades), things start clicking and they begin having fun. It's also in and around when they start playing with other people and if you kinda know what you're doing and playing with people you're friends with it is often enjoyable.
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Have her play against the easy AI while you teach her the very basics like building supply/ovie/pylon and making tier 1 units. Once she gets some basic unit control down like moving around units and attack moving, advance a little further like getting more advanced tech units and learning hotkeys, so that she realizes it's much easier to press "B, S" instead of clicking the portraits.
It's definitely not best to teach someone with the "competitive" mindset of SC as it won't be fun for them at all (especially for a 13 year old girl). Play some 2v2's against easy AIs or just really casual custom games. If it's fun for her, she'll learn how to play.
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Show her Idra's stream and tell her 'You are not my daughter until you have 150 APM and look like that. I will sell you into slavery if you do not practice 10 hours a day until you reach Masters.'
That should whip her ass into shape imo.
+ Show Spoiler +Or just let her play the campaign if you don't want to be so hardcore... v_v
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As most people have said, single player on Casual difficulty. But first, make her play vs a very easy computer and teach her the controls overall. No build orders, timings, units. She'll learn all of that in the campaign.
Once she gets the hang of it, up the difficulty to normal if she still wants to play. Finally, get her to do the challenges.
If she's still with you after all that (probably a couple of weeks time later), get her to play progressively harder computers or COOP games until she understands most of the game decently and let her ladder of have her play people you know.
Nothing else you can do. Make sure she doesn't take it too seriously and it will go well, assuming she's truly interested. She is a 13 year old girl after all.
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EPT
