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Greetings,
I have been playing SC2 since 2010 and got up to masters, while switching from not playing at all to being very active all the time. My history with Broodwar was basically playing campaign since I'm a a little kid, then starting with SC2 and coming back, knowing about esports and stuff, start a random 1v1 in the old Battlenet and gettin' beaten up hard, to not play broodwar for another 5 years or so.
Since the ASL launched and especially since the release of Remastered I have been watching Starcraft a lot. After all these years I got a little bored by SC2 and for some reason I am more excited about Broodwar than ever. It this game with a huge history, all these different popular players, maps and strategies. Looking at that from my perspective, I feel pretty hyped and there are so many little nuances to the game, that it kept being interested.
My motivation to start learning Broodwar is twofold: I discovered this awesome series from Day9, which has a very reasonable starting point and gives me some sort of direction. Also I experienced, that I played a few 2v2, BGH and ladder games. Of course I got still beat up, but I actually won some games. Due to my mechanics from SC2, watching ASL and playing the campaign through multiple times, I still suck, but I observed that there are even worse players actively playing. It is really motivating, that even now there is a realistic chance to win.
It is funny to play Broodwar with my prior knowledge, because while I play, I know how bad I am actually performing. I see these overminerals, the fact that I should expand, my production facilities are not in sync, I don't build workers, but I can't do ANYTHING. It is somewhat a pain, because I know I can do better in SC2, but here stuff just won't move as I want. At the same time I have a lot of fun. I sometimes imagined how I would relearn SC2, so this is kinda it, learning a new starcraft, which is similar in a lot of ways, yet very different. This feeling when I snipe lurkers with my marines, or when I use my camera to pump out mech units from my factories, then pick them up from the rally point, it feels very different from SC2, but it feels really good, because I need to work for it.
I want to give a shout out for the great content on Liquipedia. It has been much more helpful than the SC2 strategy part, since patches do not outdate the builds and stuff. Still, I feel when I try out a build order from there, it doesn't feel right, I feel like I am doing a lot of things a few seconds too late and I tend to have to many unspent resources. Next thing on my ToDo list is to analyze a replay from Flash and pay very close attention to the many little non-obvious things going on, like worker production, building placement and rally points.
 
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Welcome to broodwar, you're not gonna regret it!
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How are you dealing with the legibility of map-terrain in broodwar? My biggest problem trying to switch, was that some tilesets and maps made it very hard to distinguish between pathable and not pathable terrain. This led to me blocking my own units into a corner time after time.
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United States10569 Posts
welcome to the club. enjoy your stay.
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@Branch.AUT I never really thought about it that much. As said, I played a lot of campaign, so I am kinda used to the clonkiness. There were two things I noticed specifically on Neo Blood Ridge: 1. Wall-Ins are weird! You cannot trust your eyes, when it comes to what units can pass and what they can't. Day9 suggested opening a single player map, turn on cheat codes and try out a lot.
2. I copied a wall-in for that map from liquipedia and all my rally points messed up, because my marines got stuck behind the depots of the wall.
Especially the way rally points and path finding works confuses me at times and costs me unnecessary clicks
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How many hotkeys did you use in SC2? I'm just curious what people do for SC2 hotkeys.
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I also switched to Brood War like a year ago, the macro was the hardest aspect to get used to. I played Zerg in SC2 and went from using like 2 hotkeys to using all hotkeys from 1-0 in BW.
Do not regret switching, personally I enjoy the struggle not only against the opponent but against the game itself as well, very much  Welcome!
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@ninazerg I have given my hotkey layout some thought, but I wouldn't say it's very sophisticated. I use 1-3 for Army, 4-7 for Production, F1-F4 for camera, F5/F6 for worker/army selection and remaped most production keys to be around the usual WASD layout. Also I use ^ for patrol.
@Akio How long did it take you, until you felt like you have some sort of smooth macro rythm, if you have already achieved that?
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Welcome to the club, enjoy your stay, stay hyped for ASL RO8 and all the cool koreans streaming quality f-in starcraft
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On March 26 2020 02:59 DevilDriver wrote:
@ninazerg I have given my hotkey layout some thought, but I wouldn't say it's very sophisticated. I use 1-3 for Army, 4-7 for Production, F1-F4 for camera, F5/F6 for worker/army selection and remaped most production keys to be around the usual WASD layout. Also I use ^ for patrol.
@Akio How long did it take you, until you felt like you have some sort of smooth macro rythm, if you have already achieved that?
It definitely got a lot of games getting used to, especially since I decided to go with the original hotkey layout without changing any of the keys. Before ladder I played a lot of AI games to get used to the mechanics of the game though. As for how long it takes, I think that's also kind of up to what level you were in SC2. I was personally D1 so not very high and on top of that zerg in SC2 is...well...let's just say you can just build roaches 
I would say that after getting used to the maps and their respective sim-city patterns and rough builds, the macro started to come relatively naturally. Good luck!
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Welcome! You will not regret this decision, the game has a steep learning curve (expect to lose a lot of games when you're starting out), but just don't lose sight of the fun factor, this is the best game ever made! Enjoy! DM if you ever need any help.
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Why not just play both? Unless you're trying to be a pro or something.
I play both whenever I have enough time (first starterd BW back in 1999), both games kick ass.
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United States4883 Posts
This was my experience moving from SC2 to Brood War. You can be one of the top 10% players in SC2 and still continuously get your ass kicked by mid-level Brood War players. This game is hard as hell, and all the things you took for granted like unit selection, MBS, auto mining, etc reveal your true weaknesses as a player.
I think we take the 50% win rate nudge from modern matchmaking for granted too. When I started out, I had like a 10% win rate for 3 months until I started to improve significantly. When anyone starts out playing this game 1v1, they have to be willing to get smashed in almost every game before they can finally hold their own, and that's a difficult mental state to live in.
(Also, completely unrelated side note: I've found that I actually need more army hotkeys in SC2 than BW. In BW, you get used to just either having small parts of your army in position where you need it to be or just drag click a lot. SC2 has a lot more moving parts that need to be responded to quickly. Obviously, BW uses more overall hotkeys because of buildings.)
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Broodwar is a lifetime hobby. Welcome to the club.
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@True_Spike I didn't mean I'm ditching SC2 or something, maybe that came out the wrong way. I currently find Broodwar more interesting and fun to play, but I will for sure continue to play SC2 from time to time.
But also my free time is limited and it's easier for me to concentrate on one thing.
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On March 27 2020 20:43 EsportsJohn wrote:
This was my experience moving from SC2 to Brood War. You can be one of the top 10% players in SC2 and still continuously get your ass kicked by mid-level Brood War players. This game is hard as hell, and all the things you took for granted like unit selection, MBS, auto mining, etc reveal your true weaknesses as a player.
I think we take the 50% win rate nudge from modern matchmaking for granted too. When I started out, I had like a 10% win rate for 3 months until I started to improve significantly. When anyone starts out playing this game 1v1, they have to be willing to get smashed in almost every game before they can finally hold their own, and that's a difficult mental state to live in.
(Also, completely unrelated side note: I've found that I actually need more army hotkeys in SC2 than BW. In BW, you get used to just either having small parts of your army in position where you need it to be or just drag click a lot. SC2 has a lot more moving parts that need to be responded to quickly. Obviously, BW uses more overall hotkeys because of buildings.)
About the last part.
Try playing TvZ. You will quickly recognize you need 5 hotkeys for army that you dynamically update and constantly use (+building hotkeys obviously)
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TLADT24920 Posts
On March 30 2020 16:59 kogeT wrote:Show nested quote +On March 27 2020 20:43 EsportsJohn wrote:
This was my experience moving from SC2 to Brood War. You can be one of the top 10% players in SC2 and still continuously get your ass kicked by mid-level Brood War players. This game is hard as hell, and all the things you took for granted like unit selection, MBS, auto mining, etc reveal your true weaknesses as a player.
I think we take the 50% win rate nudge from modern matchmaking for granted too. When I started out, I had like a 10% win rate for 3 months until I started to improve significantly. When anyone starts out playing this game 1v1, they have to be willing to get smashed in almost every game before they can finally hold their own, and that's a difficult mental state to live in.
(Also, completely unrelated side note: I've found that I actually need more army hotkeys in SC2 than BW. In BW, you get used to just either having small parts of your army in position where you need it to be or just drag click a lot. SC2 has a lot more moving parts that need to be responded to quickly. Obviously, BW uses more overall hotkeys because of buildings.) About the last part. Try playing TvZ. You will quickly recognize you need 5 hotkeys for army that you dynamically update and constantly use (+building hotkeys obviously)
He's a zerg so I don't believe he's play much TvZ. On that point, ya, I use a lot more hotkeys whenever I play TvZ compared to say ZvT etc...
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Maybe it's just the coronavirus but has there been way more new players on ladder lately? In the past few years whenever I tried laddering I'd get stomped by Koreans and then after my MMR dropped enough I'd get stomped by those same Koreans but this time on their smurf accounts. I've been running into dudes with 50 APM now and playing them is pretty comfy
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EPT
