Cool. Once the hangover I'm working on passes I'll check that out tomorrow and try to get some games in.

I don't mind losing to learn. I do mind losing a lot but that's just ego xD.

SnowFantasy

4173 Posts

February 06 2011 03:08 GMT

#22

Just my thoughts on the subject (As another player BW player going back to it after enjoying my time on sc2),

Only play BW if you are truly going to enjoy playing the game. If your goal is to get better at sc2, your time is better spent practicing sc2.

You say you want to try BW to improve your mechanics and improve your hand speed etc. This can be practiced in SC2 though. I would say it actually shouldn't be practiced in BW because of the interface differences. Some things that are required in BW just don't need to be done in sc2.

There are some threads in the BW strategy forums though that may be somewhat useful for you though (or useful for any sc2 player really). Chill once wrote a guide that talked a bit about how to improve your mechanics which can be found here

With that being said, I would love it if you gave BW a shot. You might find out you like it more than sc2 and switch over completely.

Where do you guys play? On bnet, or on private servers.

As everyone else has mentioned, just go to this page and it will explain what to do to get started on iccup.

How do you guys handle multiple production facilities, say 10 gateways, when you can't put multiple buildings in one ctrlgroup? I've found that a really, really, REALLY annoying limitation.

Yeah, you want to save as much room as you can by grouping your buildings together with good placement. You can then use either shift+f2/f3/f4 to store a map location in a hotkey and press that to go back to all of your production buildings or hotkey one gateway and go back (double tapping the 6 key or whatever).

If you think that is an annoying limitation though, just wait until you start using units like reavers (scarab ai is notoriously stupid). Dragoons randomly stop moving too and it can be quite hard to micro them because of this.

Playing BW is extremely frustrating. Especially when you are used to your units doing what you to them to quite easily in sc2. However, I've had some epic close games that were more satisfying than any of my sc2 games have felt so far. In many of them I was even the loser.

knyttym

United States5797 Posts

February 06 2011 03:12 GMT

#23

Oh yes word of caution I'm going to give anyone who is going to start up brood war. If you don't play protoss, prepare to be frustrated like never before. TvP and ZvP are the biggest pain ever at D and is most likely the reason there are so many P players. But I can tell you there is nothing funner in brood war then rolling a zerg with sk terran and raining hell all over dragoons. Blue soup is so satisfying.

puppykiller

United States3126 Posts

February 06 2011 03:16 GMT

#24

lately theres been a decent amount of switch over so you should be able to find some very low level players to battle.

Xiphos

Canada7507 Posts

February 06 2011 03:43 GMT

#25

A word of encouragement, even though getting trashed around on ICCup, at end of the day, I can guarantee you that you will have fun.

Zvi

Israel29 Posts

February 06 2011 04:22 GMT

#26

Will it improve your SC2 play? Well, I don't know.
But:
It's best to play on ICCup (http://www.iccup.com/) since there you will find the best players, and perhaps more importantly have the Anti Hack plugin that besides for disabling all sort of hacks let's you enable a very useful function called "Lan Latency" which basically means you can play without much lag trouble.

And basically part of what makes broodwar hard is mechanics, late game zerg where you need to control like 120 units and you can only grab 12 at a time or hotkey 12 at a time, makes things hard.
Best way to deal with production facility problem is use the F keys to hotkey where your production buildings are and times right quickly run back to base making what you need and go back to micro.
Also as zerg up untill late midgame it's usually okay to keep your hatcheries hotkeyed since you won't use up all hotkeys anyway.

don_kyuhote

3006 Posts

February 06 2011 04:37 GMT

#27

If you are a real iCCup D player (real bw beginnner), like myself, then you will probably find yourself getting shit on A LOT in ladder.
Try to play practice games with someone around your skill level, because the game really becomes infinitely more fun when you play against a player around your level.

ArvickHero

10387 Posts

February 06 2011 04:47 GMT

#28

if one of the things you are focusing on is getting your mechanics up to par, a multitasking map is pretty good for getting early game multitasking down w/o having to suffer too many losses. 90 APM won't cut it at all in BW

lac29

United States1485 Posts

February 06 2011 05:15 GMT

#29

On February 06 2011 11:56 a176 wrote:
i personally loaded up BWAI so i could practice build orders against AIs with atleast some resemblance and competence to low level players. once you learn the matchups and unit counters you can easily start to take on D level players on iccup, even at this point in time.

How can I set this up?

infinity2k9

United Kingdom2397 Posts

February 06 2011 05:21 GMT

#30

If you're 80-90 apm then wow you're gonna have a hard time. I'd repeatedly practice against the computer to begin with, use APMalert and see how fast you can get to 200/200 with a regular build order while 'pretending' to do things you'd do in a game to keep up the pace, aka lay mines, move around your units/cast spells. Then once you're like 130 and can actually use control groups effectively, then go onto ICCUP.

mrblue182

United States151 Posts

February 06 2011 06:37 GMT

#31

I recently switched from SC2 to BW, and it's much more fun. It's going to be hard to start off, but I recommend playing only 1 map (either python, fighting spirit, or destination. I chose python). Create a game with the name of something along the lines of "python 1v1 D-" and you're sure to get people who after 10-15 you should be able to fight back against.

lyAsakura

United States1414 Posts

February 06 2011 06:41 GMT

#32

If you play during korean hours, then good luck.
Really recommend you don't play ICCUP after around 04:00 GMT (+00:00) if you are looking for even games. Trust me, you won't get them.

Flaunt

New Zealand784 Posts

February 06 2011 06:56 GMT

#33

It will not improve your sc2 play what so ever because you're going to spend the whole time getting use to the crappy AI. Sure Brood War is one of the greatest games ever, but I wouldn't recommend going from sc2 to bw unless you have a lot of other friends to play with.

SilverSkyLark

Philippines8437 Posts

February 07 2011 00:19 GMT

#34

On February 06 2011 15:56 Flaunt wrote:
It will not improve your sc2 play what so ever because you're going to spend the whole time getting use to the crappy AI. Sure Brood War is one of the greatest games ever, but I wouldn't recommend going from sc2 to bw unless you have a lot of other friends to play with.

Hence, iCCup.

Apexplayer

United States406 Posts

February 07 2011 01:15 GMT

#35

Playing bw will improve sc2 play if you haven't played bw at all. Gets you better at controlling multiple control groups.

PrinceDelight

Australia49 Posts

February 07 2011 02:13 GMT

#36

On February 06 2011 11:49 Harem wrote:

Show nested quote +

yes

That's one of the main reasons it exists.

Great, I might drop by tonight and see whats up.

On another note, I got a friends girlfriend to start playing with me, she has a heap to learn but it's nice having someone closer to my skill level to practice and talk about the game with. Laddering still haunts me...

ToFu.

331 Posts

February 07 2011 03:20 GMT

#37

yes i can get to D+ (~2500) playing only during the weekdays during the day (like lunch, i.e. non-korean times). during korean times, at worst i've been stomped all the way back to d- by plenty of koreans on their way up to C.. (seriously they must have like 10 accounts each there for the number of them i play and next 2 days they're C or higher).

edit: so don't play during korean times.

don_kyuhote

3006 Posts

February 07 2011 07:51 GMT

#38

On February 07 2011 12:20 ToFu. wrote:
yes i can get to D+ (~2500) playing only during the weekdays during the day (like lunch, i.e. non-korean times). during korean times, at worst i've been stomped all the way back to d- by plenty of koreans on their way up to C.. (seriously they must have like 10 accounts each there for the number of them i play and next 2 days they're C or higher).

edit: so don't play during korean times.

This.
I don't know when "korean times" are, so I just play whenever I have time.
But its kind of frustrating when you go into a D game thinking about having a good game, and then he just completely pummels you from start to finish into oblivion and turns out his highest rank was C or above.

ArvickHero

10387 Posts

February 07 2011 08:08 GMT

#39

On February 07 2011 16:51 don_kyuhote wrote:

Show nested quote +

I dunno why you guys want to avoid playing Korean times, playing them is pretty much the best way to learn since they don't absolutely suck normally, and it often produces the best games to play imo

In fact, I'm kinda pissed that after two weeks of break, I've only run into a couple of Koreans and a bunch of players that should be D but somehow are D+ because of strategic play. It's making me too relaxed in terms of effort and APM :\