• Log InLog In
  • Register
Liquid`
Team Liquid Liquipedia
EDT 03:58
CEST 09:58
KST 16:58
  • Home
  • Forum
  • Calendar
  • Streams
  • Liquipedia
  • Features
  • Store
  • EPT
  • TL+
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Smash
  • Heroes
  • Counter-Strike
  • Overwatch
  • Liquibet
  • Fantasy StarCraft
  • TLPD
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Blogs
Forum Sidebar
Events/Features
News
Featured News
WTL 2023 Summer - Week 6 Recap/Week 7 Preview2Team Liquid Map Contest #18: Voting4[Interview] iRk-AgGe7WTL 2023 Summer - Week 5 Recap/Week 6 Preview6Maru wins Code S Season 1, achieves "6SL"49
Community News
ESL Open Week #177: herO, Clem, Astrea win1Matcherino starts SC2 team with Astrea, Future16ESL Open Week #176: Creator, Clem, Solar win7Alpha X disbands15ESL Open Week #175: ByuN, MaxPax, Solar win1
StarCraft 2
General
WTL 2023 Summer - Prediction Game Matcherino starts SC2 team with Astrea, Future ESL Open Week #177: herO, Clem, Astrea win WTL 2023 Summer - Week 6 Recap/Week 7 Preview trigger Talks: SC2 Balance, Basilisk, Serral...
Tourneys
[WTL 2023] Summer - Week 7 Grand Platypus Open (EPT Asia Region) WardiTV TL Map Contest Tournament #10! [WTL 2023] Summer - Week 6 WardiTV 2023 Opens (Monthly)
Strategy
Custom Maps
TLMC#18 Judging Comments and Feedback Thread [M] (2) Magannatha [M] (2) Ultralove [M] (2) Vertigo
External Content
Mutation # 371 Never Say Die Mutation # 370 Astigmatism Mutation # 369 Undermined Mutation # 368 Secret Storm
Brood War
General
Stork's Protoss Quotes Compendium vol. 1 BGH auto balance -> http://bghmmr.com/ Golden Girl Tournament (Off-Line in Peru) Insane Snow PvT (FPVOD) Recent recommended BW games
Tourneys
[Megathread] Daily Proleagues Small VOD Thread 2.0 Artosis vs the World BSL 2v2 ProLeague S2 - Day 4 - Sunday 20:00 CEST
Strategy
[H] Yet even more questions about DT builds Carriers or arbiters Abusive drop locations on Vermeer
Other Games
General Games
Diablo IV FF7 remake for PS4 announced Nintendo Switch Thread Frost Giant announce Stormgate Diablo 4 lvl 100 HC challenge!
Dota 2
Official 'what is Dota anymore' discussion Berlin Major 2023
League of Legends
MSI is happening, the thread TSM pausing esports and CLG Dead Building the Future of Sport at Riot Games
Heroes of the Storm
Heroes International Nations Cup - Berlin 2023
Hearthstone
TL Mafia
TL Endures Mafia TL Endures Voting Thread TL Mafia Plays: Diplomacy TL Mafia Community Thread [410]TL.net/forum/mafia Appeal Disambiguation 1.02
Community
General
US Politics Mega-thread Russo-Ukrainian War Thread NASA and the Private Sector The Games Industry And ATVI Summer Games Done Quick 2023!
Fan Clubs
The Guru Fan Club INnoVation Fan Club
Media & Entertainment
[Manga] One Piece Korean Music Discussion Movie Discussion! Rome (TV Series) [TV] HBO The Last Of Us series
Sports
NBA General Discussion 2022 - 2023 Football Thread TeamLiquid Health and Fitness Initiative For 2023 Formula 1 Discussion McBoner: A hockey love story
World Cup 2022
FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 Thread
Tech Support
StarCraft 2 Is Crashing on My PC
TL Community
Recent Gifted Posts
Blogs
Atom-Mech (Chapter 4)
Terryberri
Berlin and Balloons!
FuDDx
Unexpected Wholesome SC Mome…
JieXian
Job interview
mantequilla
15 years
Shady Sands
The truth about Final Fan…
jameswatts
TL Currency Converter Mafia…
Minely
Teaching Students StarCr…
Lovethelord
Customize Sidebar...

Website Feedback

Closed Threads



Active: 958 users

Brood War, StarCraft 2 & (possibly) competing

Blogs > Liquid`Ret
Post a Reply
1 2 3 Next All
Liquid`Ret
Profile Blog Joined October 2002
Netherlands4505 Posts
Last Edited: 2017-11-09 00:24:50
November 08 2017 16:49 GMT
#1
Hey guys,

Figured this would be a good place to give a little update about what I've been doing and thinking lately. I've recently not streamed any brood war, and took a break from the game and I want to explain why. I'd also like to talk about some of the differences between StarCraft 1, and StarCraft 2.

Since being a SC2 progamer

Some of you might know, I had recently started playing brood war again with the release of SC:remastered. Before this, I stopped practicing StarCraft 2 and competing in tournaments in the summer of 2015, after making it to top16 in WCS, and doing decently in IEM cologne by qualifyting for the group stages, but then getting my ass whooped by innovation and lilbow. When Lotv came out and they nerfed injects, and made them stackable, it made me not enjoy playing as much because I had spend a great ammount of time and attention on perfecting my injecting method, including hotkeying every seperate hatchery to be able to track the progress of the inject bar. So it was a decent time to move on, I thought.

Since then I have kept a few jobs, nothing of note, and had decided this year I would get back into school to learn programming and web development. By now I've been doing this for a month or 2, and it's going fairly well so far, especially considering that I hadn't been in school for nearly 10 years, so far it's manageable for me. Anyway, back to this summer, they announced SC:Remastered and I figured what the heck, why not play the game that got all of this started for me back in the day.

Coming back to BW

I think I started playing again around june, or july. At first, it was extremely difficult. I was crazy with customizing hotkeys in StarCraft 2, and going back to BW without customizable hotkeys was so hard, because I had trained my brain and fingers to press keys differently than I was doing when I was playing BW, but the experience was very enjoyable.

I had so much fun just playing games on iccup, and then when I got invited to the launch event practicing actually became meaningfull and it gave me so much satisfaction. Since august I had been streaming quite regularly, up untill about 3 weeks ago, and my progress was steady. My muscle memory and the way my hand was moving around the keyboard really felt like coming home in a way, and just use the keyboard in a way that everything started to make sense again. You could say that somewhere along in the way in sc2 with all the changes I made to my play, I got a little lost. As I played more and more, the way my hands were moving around the keyboard just started to feel better and better. Even my typing got better again, and I just felt more comfortable overall. My mmr would bounce around between 2600-2800 and towards the end I was pretty much able to beat anyone outside of korea (but also lose to quite a few people ).

If anything, dedicating all of my free time (4-5 hours daily) to StarCraft, made me hungry. I felt hungry to improve, compete, strive to be better each day. All of those things are so addictive for me, its like my brain just goes crazy and I wake up and every inch of me being just wants to be better at the game. Difficult to think about anything else. But at the same time, a lot of things made playing difficult. I started to have lag with korean players right around the time I would be home from school which was Korean peak hours (3-7 pm CET). So everytime I would start practicing I would jump in and out of unplayable games for a very long time. Then I also had some experiences in tournaments playing against Dandy (Terran from peru). Games we were playing were high latency on tr8, making it so difficult to control mutalisks. While this player might have been better than me at the time, it made me realise the online competitive environment simply wasn't that good for me. I could practice my ass off, but at best I would have to play ZvZ vs some very capable zergs (eonzerg, trutacz, sziky, notforyou), which would most of the time be 50-50 or very close to it.. And then playing vs terrans with high latency in tournaments, it would make it difficult for me to really enjoy competiting and playing in these tournaments. Combined with the fact that ladder had become unplayable for me unless I played after 8 pm, it was hard to keep enjoying brood war, even though the game itself remains really great.

Around this time also it was announced that Draco, Morrow would be invited to the italian esports open. I was a little bit dissapointed to not be invited to this tournament, since I won the remastered launch event, have a big history in the game, and, was streaming my practice almost everyday and showing steady improvement and ability to compete with the best Europeans from an early stage of picking up the game again. Recently Zotac Cup NA also announced that they would invite Draco from the Europe region to play in their tournament.

Now - I am not the only person who is unable to play tournaments. It's a sad situation where guys who have been practicing the game for years like eonzerg, bonyth, trutacz, sziky, dewalt, etc. are for the most part not rewarded for being the strongest players, as well as having dedicated years to becoming better. So really I don't want to complain too much about that. There are people who are more deserving to play in offline tournaments than me anyway. The sad reality is that these 2 events are the only big ones, that have been announced. All of these factors combined made me take a break from the game.

With the announcement of SC2 becoming free to play, and seeming lack of interest from any of the established circuits such as dreamhack, iem, mlg, etc. as well as Blizzard making zero announcements for remastered tournaments outside of Korea, at this moment in time it feels unlikely that there will be any big BW events of note in 2018 for me to play in. (But hopefully I will be wrong on this).

StarCraft 2 vs BW

However, playing BW really sparked the competitive fire in me once again. So recently I have also started to play a little bit of StarCraft 2 again. Especially watching blizzcon made me feel hyped for the game. I'll be honest, I don't enjoy it as much as I enjoy BW. I strongly feel like there is much less deliberate unit control, micro, and just overall gameplay elements that attribute to 'fun' are found much more in BW than in SC2.

I've heard all these people say that, StarCraft 2 is a strategic game, and BW is a mechanical game. I strongly disagree. I feel StarCraft 2 might be a strategic game, but very little of that strategizing happens while you are actually inside the game. Games are so fast paced, and being on top of scouting everything is nearly impossible that you have to decide on most strategies before the game. You might change your path slightly if you get different tells, but most of your responses are pre-programmed and you try to execute as good as possible. Of course there is strategic variance, you play differently vs different unit compositions, but it's not the same kind of strategy I've experienced in brood war.

In brood war, I feel like players have oceans of time. Once both players have their mechanics on an adequate level, there is so much time to dedicate to thinking about the game, where to place your units, how to setup engagements, which bases to take and which key locations to defend. Alongside the high ground mechanic, defensive positions are much stronger in brood war and this gives the game a much more strategic feeling to me.
In sc2, I feel like I'm racing with tunnel vision to a timing or a unit comp based timing in the game where my chances are highest to win (differentiating slightly depending on what opponent is doing) - but in brood war my eyes are wide open trying to observe and take everything in, then pondering about how to proceed and best trap my enemy into the claws of my lurkers, dark swarm, plague, and 100 zerglings which are impossible to control.

StarCraft 2 does still have lots of the elements that make rts 'fun.' Unit movement is very important in the game, counter attacks, perfect injecting + overwhelming opponents is very enjoyable, and overall playing the game ignites the same kind of competitive fire, wanting to improve, making progress, and wanting to compete. If I could somehow learn to enjoy the useage of spellcasters, I might even say I 'love' that game as well. Of course everything surrounding SC2 right now, the battle.net interface, automated tournaments, ladder systems, updated map pools, constant balance/design patches, it's all really good right now. Perhaps with constant improvements it really can come to a place where it can feel as fun to play as BW for me, or at least close to it.
Also some of the guys playing at blizzcon and in GSL are so skilled and set themselves apart so much from other competitors, that you have to respect their ability. It's something worth trying to immitate, or try and learn to do yourself.

Competing

So I've had to do some thinking about what I want to do. I could keep playing BW, not play anything at all and dedicate all my time to school, or try playing some SC2 again.
Because StarCraft 2 actually has tournaments announced for 2018 (and lots of em!), I think that if I will continue dedicating my free-time to gaming while going to school I will be playing and streaming StarCraft 2. The reality is that which game I find more fun, is less important to me than the possiblity to compete. Because the competitor in me needs that feeling of practice being meaningfull. All of my life I have wanted to compete with people, prove myself, improve. The oppurtunities to compete makes a world of difference for me. To all the people that enjoyed my stream and are wondering what happend, this is pretty much it. I have been torn about what game to focus on and what to do in the future. Since I have not played StarCraft 2 competitively in over 2 years, undoubtfully I am going to be terrible for a while. But most likely my stream will be back at some point, if anything for some casual fun. BW has taught me, that despite being old af, I can still pick up games and learn relatively quickly.

Thank you for reading, guys!

- retjah





****
Team Liquid
Musicus
Profile Joined August 2011
Germany23566 Posts
November 08 2017 17:06 GMT
#2
Best of luck Ret, it will be exciting to see you play sc2 again!

Hopefully sc2 continues to improve and will be just as fun as BW for you at some point.
Maru and Serral are probably top 5.
Zaros
Profile Blog Joined September 2010
United Kingdom3603 Posts
November 08 2017 17:13 GMT
#3
Hope to see you competing in WCS in 2018 and good luck. I think the new balance patch will help you enjoy sc2 more as they are trying to reduce the reliance on mass spell casters but I guess infestors are still pretty good.
intrigue
Profile Blog Joined November 2005
Washington, D.C9931 Posts
November 08 2017 17:23 GMT
#4
gl with everything, ret
Moderatorhttps://soundcloud.com/castlesmusic/sets/oak
Edpayasugo
Profile Joined April 2013
United Kingdom2186 Posts
November 08 2017 17:26 GMT
#5
Great blog and insight. Thanks.
FlaSh MMA INnoVation FanTaSy MKP TY Ryung | soO Dark Rogue | HuK PartinG Stork State
raff100
Profile Joined April 2011
498 Posts
November 08 2017 17:52 GMT
#6
Best of luck, I loved your stream
bartus88
Profile Blog Joined October 2010
Netherlands491 Posts
November 08 2017 18:10 GMT
#7
Great to hear you might compete again in SC2! It took you relatively little time in BW to improve to the point where you could take games of players like Rain, so hopefully you can get back in shape quickly in SC2 as well.
Random master race
Qikz
Profile Blog Joined November 2009
United Kingdom11952 Posts
November 08 2017 19:11 GMT
#8
It was an honour having you play in one of my Clash for Char tournaments Ret. Hopefully you enjoy whatever you go on to do, but the Broodwar scene will miss you!
FanTaSy's #1 Fan | STPL Caster/Organiser | SKT BEST KT | https://twitch.tv/stpl
blade55555
Profile Blog Joined March 2009
United States17422 Posts
November 08 2017 19:18 GMT
#9
I hope you come back to SC2. Funnily enough I started playing SC2 again a week or so before Blizzcon. It's in a much better state than 2015 (which is when I quit as well). Hope to see you go at it.

Good luck with whatever decision you go with!
When I think of something else, something will go here
FueledUpAndReadyToGo
Profile Blog Joined March 2013
Netherlands30471 Posts
November 08 2017 19:56 GMT
#10
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Would be great to have you competing next year.
Neosteel Enthusiast
candapat
Profile Joined November 2015
6 Posts
November 08 2017 20:09 GMT
#11
Great read! I sure hope that you come back to sc2 again, you've always been one of my favorite players to watch. And we need more 90-drone zergs out there )))
ZigguratOfUr
Profile Blog Joined April 2012
Iraq16955 Posts
November 08 2017 20:34 GMT
#12
GL with any path you choose.
Waxangel
Profile Blog Joined September 2002
United States31899 Posts
November 08 2017 20:54 GMT
#13
gl, hf
AdministratorHey HP can you redo everything youve ever done because i have a small complaint?
fazek42
Profile Blog Joined April 2011
Hungary438 Posts
November 08 2017 21:22 GMT
#14
I'd prefer you playing BW, but I get the explanation. Hopefully Blizzard will fix the lag and there will be BW events (although I guess this is just me dreaming) and then everybody will be playing BW, my favourite game Thanks for showing us cool games Ret and GL with everything.
paxconsciente
Profile Joined January 2015
Belgium91 Posts
November 09 2017 00:02 GMT
#15
playing sc2 seriously as a macro player is just bad
the game is good if you don't take it seriously, i can't imagine how rough life would be if you were trying to succeed as a pro in that game though.
The best way to predict the future is to create it - Peter Drucker. <3 so0,ret,JD,Happy,Innovation,Snute
Heyjoray
Profile Joined September 2015
240 Posts
Last Edited: 2017-11-09 00:19:25
November 09 2017 00:12 GMT
#16
On November 09 2017 09:02 paxconsciente wrote:
playing sc2 seriously as a macro player is just bad
the game is good if you don't take it seriously, i can't imagine how rough life would be if you were trying to succeed as a pro in that game though.

Not at all. Its just incredible cool to say shit like that, isnt it?
boxerfred
Profile Blog Joined December 2012
Germany8360 Posts
November 09 2017 00:55 GMT
#17
gl, ret!
dragoon
Profile Joined December 2010
United States695 Posts
November 09 2017 02:45 GMT
#18
this makes me very happy jos i still remember meeting you in Columbus for MLG and ive had great respect for you long before that.

goodluck! i'll see you there man:D
i love you
TT1
Profile Blog Joined December 2008
Canada9860 Posts
November 09 2017 03:30 GMT
#19
papa nyoken is gonna be all alone
ab = tl(i) + tl(pc), the grand answer to every tl.net debate
NoS-Craig
Profile Joined July 2011
Australia3060 Posts
November 09 2017 04:00 GMT
#20
I had fun reading that man. I hope things can keep going for you and BW. Shame we're not getting more offline tourneys outside of Korea at the moment.
Artosis loves Starcraft
1 2 3 Next All
Please log in or register to reply.
Live Events Refresh
Next event in 2m
[ Submit Event ]
Live Streams
Refresh
StarCraft 2
SpeCial 160
Forgg! 84
StarCraft: Brood War
Bisu 1401
Larva 1071
Snow 193
LaStScan 127
EffOrt 98
ToSsGirL 93
Sacsri 21
Barracks 17
Sacsri 15
Hm[arnc] 7
[ Show more ]
Jumperer 6
Dota 2
XBOCT754
XaKoH 511
XcaliburYe488
League of Legends
JimRising 640
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
Taz117
Other Games
summit1g12846
singsing2048
Stewie2K1804
WinterStarcraft987
HitmanStarcraft2244
Livibee235
ViBE131
Fuzer 91
Mew2King87
Trikslyr70
nookyyy 58
Hui .56
febbydoto32
Organizations
Other Games
gamesdonequick40651
Dota 2
PGL Dota 2 - Main Stream13460
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
ESL CS:GO1389
Other Games
BasetradeTV271
StarCraft 2
Esl_sc2196
ESL.tv196
StarCraft: Brood War
lovetv 26
StarcraftVOD4
StarCraft 2
Blizzard YouTube
StarCraft: Brood War
BSLTrovo
[ Show 21 non-featured ]
StarCraft 2
• Maddox 24
• Adnapsc2 10
• LUISG 1
• Gussbus
• Laughngamez YouTube
• Poblha
• Migwel
• Alpha X_
• aXEnki
• intothetv
• Kozan
• IndyKCrew
• LaughNgamez Trovo
StarCraft: Brood War
• sscaitournament2
• STPLYoutube
• BSLYoutube
• AfreecaTV YouTube
League of Legends
• Scarra3164
• Ambition2071
• Shiphtur1124
• Stunt639
Upcoming Events
Grand Platypus Open
2m
CranKy Ducklings8
World Team League
4h 2m
Team Liquid vs Berserker eSports
Onsyde Gaming vs SSLT
PSISTORM Gaming Misc
10h 2m
Matcherino INu Series
21h 2m
Classic vs Astrea
ByuN vs Solar
Sparkling Tuna Cup
1d
World Team League
1d 4h
Starlight Twinkle vs DKZ Gaming
Shopify Rebellion vs PSISTORM Gaming
BeAsT Cup
1d 8h
ESL Open Cup
2 days
ESL Open Cup
2 days
ESL Open Cup
2 days
[ Show More ]
PassionCraft
5 days
Korean StarCraft League
6 days
Liquipedia Results

Completed

Wisdom Invitational
WardiTV TLMC #10
NC 2023 - EU Quals. - 2nd Stage
CCT Online Finals #1

Ongoing

FS Mania
KCM Ladies Race Survival 2023 Season 2
KCM Race Survival 2023 Season 2
GRS Season 6
Super Anchor Qualifying S1
Platinum StarCraft League S1
CSL 9: 2023 Summer
BSL 2v2 ProLeague #2
TT Offline Party
WTL 2023 Summer
Nexus Never Dies #3
HOTS Unchained
ESL Impact League S3 Finals
IEM Dallas 2023

Upcoming

Copa Latinoamericana Season 2
ESL Winter
2023 GSL S3: Code S
2023 GSL S2: Code S
HSC XXIII
ESL Summer
LTK Thunderball
Nations Cup 2023
ESL Pro League Season 18
IEM Cologne 2023
BLAST Premier Fall Groups
ESL Challenger Katowice 2023
BLAST Premier Spring Final
TLPD

1. ByuN
2. TY
3. Dark
4. Solar
5. Stats
6. Nerchio
7. sOs
8. soO
9. INnoVation
10. Elazer
1. Rain
2. Flash
3. EffOrt
4. Last
5. Bisu
6. Soulkey
7. Mini
8. Sharp
Sidebar Settings...

Advertising | Privacy Policy | Terms Of Use | Contact Us

Original banner artwork: Jim Warren
The contents of this webpage are copyright © 2023 TLnet. All Rights Reserved.