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So after making a blog post to promote my iphone game, I ended up buying starcraft remastered (RaGe told me to) and started playing ladder games telling myself I'd just play 2 or 3 games (I think I've played like 100-150 now...). I think it's been 15ish (?) years since I played. To put things into context, when I played starcraft people pretty much exclusively played lost temple, maybe also some "new" maps like Python. I had about 180 apm IIRC, which dropped down to 110 as I played again. As a terran player I enjoyed buildable terrain, cliffs to drop on, and islands to provide $$$. Compared to today's maps lost temple was insanely good for terran, but I remember getting my ass handed to me a lot on that map as well.
I decided to write this for fun and because I thought my way way out of date impressions might be amusing to some of you guys
Even though I obviously expected people to get better, it's SHOCKING to see just how much players have improved since 15+ years ago. I was initially ranked at D rank and assumed I'd swiftly climb up as I got used to the game - not so. I even got kicked down to E rank after a long series of losses, at one point I lost 12 games in a row to D rankers. People seem to simply have way much more units much faster, have a plan mapped out for way later in the game, sometimes have tremendously high apm (I run into D players with 250 apm in long games, WTF?), are comfortable with multiple maps, and seem to have no problem dealing with my rush builds (yes, I started out trying to gundam rush every tvp game like I used to - didn't work out), get supply blocked less often, etc. The only thing that people haven't improved at markedly seems to be scouting - a lot of opponents seem to be completely uninterested in what I'm doing.
Whenever I won a game, it seemed to be due to some extremely lucky factor. E.g. my opponent goes for a risky cheese and I stop it, I get vultures into a p's mineral line and kill their probes, enemy T never scouts my ridiculously greedy expansions, enemy player doesn't want TvT and leaves immediately, etc. In "honor & skill" type games I always got destroyed.
Anyway after playing a billion (100?) games my average apm is up to 145 and I cracked C rank for the first time (I'm sure I'll get demoted to D rank again swiftly, still happy). Celebration time!
Some of the things I've changed that helped me start getting my first wins against the other newbs without uber luck:
- Watch twitch.com/nyoken - amazing stream for tvp. He kept building walls and I eventually followed suit which really helps if you're a newb who can't micro vs zeals early.
I also had a tendency to think "this p is being greedy, allin" way too quickly, it's actually reasonable for them to be quite a bit ahead in economy because your units are very strong in the endgame, I never knew that. I've strangely been doing better since I started taking my time even if they are mining considerably more $$$ than me which was very counterintuitive for me.
I've also been leaving 1 tank in my main placed ridiculously far in the corner against recall (on top of the usual mass mines + turrets) because I was getting killed by recall over & over and that really seems to help. They never seem to figure it out where it is. I read somewhere that terran is supposed to max out in like 13 minutes but I've never even come close tot that, I think my fastest was around 15 mins but that seems to be good enough at D rank. I usually end up having a max/near max army only around 16 mins - I notice many other terrans at my mmr are better at macro.
- In tvz, when you have low apm and skill, IMHO you should open with goliaths every game. M&m is very skill intensive, but I think goliaths require much more skill from the z player. If you open with 3facts goliaths it seems like you can get away from mutas without building any turrets at all, whereas with M&m I was dying early game even with mass turrets. I like to start m&m upgrades early and switch to m&m when they go mass hydra or hydra/queen. I get to win some games against zerg players who are clearly better (faster, better micro, better macro, better understanding of the game) than me because this strat is so newb-friendly
Things that are better now;
- Matchmaking is great, playing against people 5x better or worse than you is just not fun
- It's great to see people playing many maps. The new maps are varied and interesting. I ended up vetoing the semi island thing (plasma?) after a while because I didn't enjoy it
- People are really quite good. If you are like A or even S rank in this era that's pretty insane imo, congrats to all of you degenerate sickos.
- That map 'optimizer' tells you how to make walls with highlights in the terrain, so helpful and prevents so much pointless losses, bravo
- People seem to use pretty much every unit and ability in the game now except protoss scouts. (back in the day we had the Stove...). Very cool to see
Things that seem worse now;
- Many seem pretty bitter / taking the game too seriously even at D rank. Especially in TvT where my play is quite unreasonable/greedy/cheesy I get a lot of hate when I get lucky. Well I can't read korean but I assume they're not writing sweet poems at the end
- People seem pretty obsessed with their rating, maybe they'd be better off if they played a bit less to win and more to improve or just have fun. I actually don't want my rating to inflate because C / B rank players will massacre me easily if they play safe & standard
- There's definitely more of a "hive mind" mentality with many players trying the same strats. I'm not even sure if that's a negative actually but in the old days everybody played wildly differently and were trying to figure things out as they went
- I can't get in touch with anyone! Is it me or is the friends function on the battle.net client really buggy?
- Back in the day we had WGTour and you could just download and watch the replays of anyone. It seems like replays are private now, that's a shame imo
- I'm old and my hands and eyesight suck 
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Welcome back to BW. I feel your struggles. When I first started and was using what I remembered of builds from 2010 era it was fairly awkward. Especially when trying to "punish greed" that wasn't actually greed. The skill level of players these days is insane.
Still best game ever made.
You mentioned not being able to dl replays of anyone. There is a website where people upload replays where you can see stats and dl their replays. https://repmastered.app/
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Welcome back refreshing to read this new perspective.
Yes, the friends list is buggy, but the biggest obstacle is if you add someone who connected through a different Gateway (Europe, Americas, Asia). You can't see them if they are not on the same Gateway as you.
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On March 23 2021 08:07 unit wrote:You mentioned not being able to dl replays of anyone. There is a website where people upload replays where you can see stats and dl their replays. https://repmastered.app/
dude that's super helpful! Thank you!!!
On March 23 2021 10:02 Jealous wrote:
Yes, the friends list is buggy, but the biggest obstacle is if you add someone who connected through a different Gateway (Europe, Americas, Asia). You can't see them if they are not on the same Gateway as you.
Ahhh im on asia gateway that explains everything. Thanks man!
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Welcome back boomer!
Seeing your name brings back memories of the "RWA" days! Good times!
I've thought about giving BW a try again but your write up hardly instills confidence in me. Might stay in my SC2 safe space. xD
While I haven't played in ages I've found myself watching it a bit recently, amazing how well it still holds up.
LOL@Python shout out!
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Hahahaha yeah You totally should try it out though! I'm obviously having fun or I wouldn't have ended up playing 100 games instead of 3
The matchmaking system gets a lot of hate but I actually think it's pretty great and does a good job of getting you games that are closely matched which is really where the fun is at.
I would only really be worried for people who never played bw before and have to start from 0 now. I was matched up against an unranked player once who had 50 (!) apm, didnt make workers, made some cannons in front of my 3rd and died and I think he will just quit the game after a few losses and never find out how interesting it is...
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Northern Ireland25618 Posts
Yeah I have zero idea how a legitimately new player can come to BW these days.
Good write up, really must get trying BW again one of these days before I’m too old!
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Interesting perspective. Don't worry about not being maxed out as quickly as theoretically possible. Players, who can max out at13min are probably already A rank or better. Simply having decent macro is a big part of why they are A.
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Nice post, I mainly just okay 3v3 bgh but may try my hands at ladder
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Signed in just to say that GroT is RWA legend!!! Nostalgia hitting hard. Nice to hear from you, and see the rekindling of your bw spirit.
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Enjoyed reading your blog, keep at it good sir
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that was a very enjoyable story, thank you for sharing; i' ve been getting into Halo, having a blast
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Jathin I desperately want to & need to but I'm retarded and don't understand how - am I supposed to switch servers somewhere?
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ah ok u can change it on battle.net client... you guys are on americas server?
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hahahaha :D spending lots of time in offices?
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Yeah I feel u having a lot of responsibility can definitely be brutal and it comes concentrated in periods and feels like its never gonna end. I think you'll have more happy days ahead if you tough it out a little more man...
(Except for taxes that just gets worse & worse forever)
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is awesome32275 Posts
On March 30 2021 07:35 Jathin wrote:
dude I see people posting about how happy they are in their 30s and I'm like "they are lying." it's the worst decade. now I pay taxes, have a mortgage, mouths to feed, and my job has real responsibility
my life was at its peak when the highlight of my week was when Live2Win and yakii posted new VODs. I died to you 100-0 vs gundam and I smiled every time
looooooool.
I was so happy tunning live at 4-6am to watch BW and getting barely no sleep. Now if I go to bed at 2 am I feel like my body died.
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15 years ago the UMS & Fastest scene was far bigger than it is now, whereas now with the ladder the game is more 1v1 focused.The casuals got scared off, part of the reason why the overall level has increased.
Personally, being 36 now with more responsibilities than i had years ago i play 2-3 FFA/3v3 casual games on the weekend and make maps now and then.Mostly out of habit i have to admit.I don't have the incentive or time to bust out 1v1 ladder, I watch ASL when it's on.Plenty of these guys on ladder were also playing during the darker days of 2010-2017, so they never had time to get rusty.You have to admire that dedication to the game.
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EPT
