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Alright! So over time I have noticed that not only have I seen 1, nor 2, threads regarding help for getting friends interested in Starcraft, but many:
+ Show Spoiler [After a few minutes of searching....] +
I'm sure there will be even more to come, so I wrote this on behalf of those people who want to know some good ways to get their friends to play SC, but more importantly, enjoy it.
I feel, that it is near impossible to force someone to like a game. You cannot (and I quote myself lol) go up to them and be like "This is TL, theres ____, ____, ____, ____, and ____. Some famous players are ____, ____, ____, and ____. In 1v1 you need to consistently ____ and ____. Don't play noob FPM/BGH maps though, some common low money maps are _____, ____, and ____." Even if they tell you the game looks fun, and interesting, you will most probably lose their attention immediately.
How I do it:
What you have to do, is get them to enjoy some aspect of the game in the first place. Whether it be playing on (the dreaded D=) FPM, BGH, UMS, Campaign, Mass Attack games, trailers of SC2, etc. Play some games they enjoy with them, whether you like them or not(in the end you get a good friend that understands plays an amazing game with you, so don't complain too much  ). Once they think they are ready to go in depth furthermore with SC, show them melee perhaps. Play some TvB, possibly comp stomps, against noobs, fastest, etc, where they aren't going to be completely destroyed and lose all hope. Start playing some better players, more advanced maps, maybe something like I am in the process of doing with my friend, showing him Pimpest plays videos, progamers VODs, and TL.
As interest increases, begin to show your friend about BO's, macro, micro, which units > others, and standard play to help them get to develop strategy on their own as well.
If you play against them try not to rape them or be BM too much, or it will frustrate them. Obviously that's not good if you want them to like the game  .
I.E. Killing all their workers then running away, planting a mine/burrowing a ling at their expo, delaying the game until you get 200/200 carriers, etc.
How this is working for me:
Personally this worked very well for me, because I'm working on getting my friend into SC, but right now I'm showing him TL still. I showed him that TL is much much more than just a "starcraft site", and linked him to some funny blogs, cool news reports, etc. I showed him PP's, showed him how to 4pool(which he really loves, looks like he is going to be a Z player), and played 2v2 comps with him on Blood Bath(one of his favourite maps so far) to get his motivation for playing the game up. At school out of the blue he is like "yo, wanna go play some SC in the animation room?" and I'm like "(wow, he isn't even putting on a face, he actually likes the game =D)sure man, let's rooooooooooll ;D". Going to be playing with him tonight, he has an account on TL here(Action Bastard) but he has like 10 posts, he doesn't use it nearly as much as me(yet ), so if you see him posting, don't give him a hard time. I'm starting to show him BO's now, such as a 3 hatch build, or 9pool, instead of always 4pooling.
How I got into competetive Starcraft myself:
I used to play BGH and UMS every day, thinking there were only a few handful of progamers, the best one being BoXeR, but eventually I started hosting Obs games because I was too noob to play them myself and picked up main BO's from that. Once I figured out about TL I started lurking here, reading threads and putting them to use. Eventually I started to play in my Obs games, people asked for my iCC rank and I said "wtf is iccup?", and once I found out I made an account, played some 1v1, and created an account on TL as well. Since I made my account here and started to follow in on competetive BW my increase in skill has gone from x amount/month, to 10x/month.
TL;DR = Don't force your friends into competetive SC, get them to enjoy it, and they will bring themselves to like it as much as you do.
For those who have other ways of doing this kind of thing, or if you disagree on a point, feel free to explain why, and how you would go about it. Try to keep the flaming to a minimum though.
But remember, this guide might not appeal to all, but it works for me
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Good advice probably, not very much different then what else has been posted in those various threads, but decent contribution anyways
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nice.
I got a girl into competitive gaming.. but she only likes seeing the guys that play 
imo as long as shes involved in SC its fine right?
nice OP btw
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@Pokebunny: Yep, I know. I just compiled what I believe to be true from them, added some of my own, and organized it.
@Sonu: Uhh. Sure lol. Still pretty cool. Thanks.
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why would she like the guys that play? 95% of them are ugly as fuck. unless she's ugly too OO:
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On February 24 2009 11:00 Xeris wrote:
why would she like the guys that play? 95% of them are ugly as fuck. unless she's ugly too OO:
no one can resist FBH's crotch dance. can't you hear all the fan girls screaming when he gets on stage?
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Just play UMS games with them until they learn all of the units. The first game they play they'll make 50 photon canons though
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Also, when you play against them, don't kill them too bad, as it leads to frustration. I was getting my friend into the game, but he got mad and ditched it after I kept beating him.
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On February 24 2009 11:12 AlphaxOmega wrote:
Also, when you play against them, don't kill them too bad, as it leads to frustration. I was getting my friend into the game, but he got mad and ditched it after I kept beating him.
Yeah that's a good point. I sort of made that mistake with a friend once. It was PvT on fastest, anddddddddd basically I killed all his SCV's with one scarab then ditched his base as BM. He ended up leaving a minute later, I could tell he was pretty pissed haha.
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On February 24 2009 11:12 AlphaxOmega wrote:
Also, when you play against them, don't kill them too bad, as it leads to frustration. I was getting my friend into the game, but he got mad and ditched it after I kept beating him.
this happened to me. I had 5 friends that were interested it in (after watching BoxeR's highlight videos - we had played once or twice at a PC Bang), then I beat them all with scv+marine and they all ditched it to play DotA.
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On February 24 2009 11:07 GhostKorean wrote:
Just play UMS games with them until they learn all of the units. The first game they play they'll make 50 photon canons though
this is so very true. but at last they'll get the feel for it? once they've been intoduced into higher level (even 2v2 play) they will gradually get out of this habit
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United States20661 Posts
On February 24 2009 11:00 Xeris wrote:
why would she like the guys that play? 95% of them are ugly as fuck. unless she's ugly too OO:
Mi-nam MagicNs please.
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Funny, I did exactly what you say not to do and my friend is still pretty into SC (although he sucks :p)
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good advice but sc/bwi is my hidden secert and il take it to the grave !! :D
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On February 24 2009 11:00 Xeris wrote:
why would she like the guys that play? 95% of them are ugly as fuck. unless she's ugly too OO:
Xellos, Reach, and Yellow are fan favorites.
Winning a lot of games, and I mean a lot of games, tends to increase ones hotness. Flash has fans, he's underage and doesn't look that good.
I'm trying to get a guy into SC too and I can't figure out how to make him use build orders. I think I need to stop hard countering his build.
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Like any good drug you gotta give it time, little by little reeling the suckers in, and then they're your prostitutes and you're the pimp.
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Recently got one friend playing and another one started following the proscene So I'm pulling my weight!
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My roommates all started playing and they got into it by just playing each other a lot and doing FFA's with me sometimes. Don't 1v1 people that are just starting even if you're going to "go easy", because it will make them hate the game. Also don't initially stand behind them and say "idle worker, use hotkeys, keep making workers." In my experience if you can't find other friends that are also terrible to start with them, they won't play.
If you have a small group of people just starting with each other they'll have fun playing each other. I got one of my roommates to start using not even a build but just an opening, i.e. 9 OL, 12 hatch at exp, and this gave him enough of an advantage over the other roommates that they wanted to learn a "build" also. Unfortunately none of them wanted to learn a real build and they mostly just fuck around playing each other, occasionally going on iccup and losing really bad, completely refusing to learn standard play or to try and get much better. I don't really care, they at least still play and will maybe decide they want to try getting better on their own later. They prefer watching pro VODs to playing.
My brother had his friend that is into most other games try playing, he was completely put off as soon as he saw it. "Ugh why does the HUD take up the entire screen, can I change the resolution?" My brother tried to teach him to play by himself, he had no other shitty people to play against and got burned out really fast. It is extremely frustrating to watch someone playing Starcraft without the mouse, doing everything incredibly slow, and doing shit that makes no sense, but keep in mind if you just yell at people to try to play like you they not only won't be able to do it but will just get really frustrated and want to give up.
My roommate who is now at least decent (still d- on iccup but like 70apm) had one of his friends play the computer, he yelled at him a bunch and told him exactly what to try doing, got really frustrated that he was so slow, and lost twice to the computer. He was so fucking slow; it looked like maybe 20apm, and after two games he said "I don't think I can play this without being on speed... I'm exhausted for now." Keep in mind how fast it seems to a new player and how unreasonable it is to expect them to keep making workers while going up a techtree they don't understand while using hotkeys they don't know yet, etc. etc.
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I have a few friends that like starcraft but i they don't really understand the game and i find it hard to explain it to them so i gave up.
The other day at a party somehow SC got mentioned and i ended up going on a really passionate drunken rant about how awesome SC is to some guy who seemed interested and wanted to watch me play so i got on my friends laptop and played a 1v1 on west and just drunkenly ranted about what i was doing but he had no idea what i was talking about. I think the entire game i just went on and on about how much of a noob my opponent was for building cannons before nexus after scouting my 12 hatch.....moral of the story is, drunk people are more open to starcraft. Try getting your friends drunk first
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On February 24 2009 15:55 systranerror wrote:
He was so fucking slow; it looked like maybe 20apm, and after two games he said "I don't think I can play this without being on speed... I'm exhausted for now." Keep in mind how fast it seems to a new player and how unreasonable it is to expect them to keep making workers while going up a techtree they don't understand while using hotkeys they don't know yet, etc. etc.
My older brother was a lot more receptive to experimenting with BW when we played at slower speeds. I had totally forgotten SC even had speed options but since then I've been using it with a few friends. It helps to teach them the concepts and a few strategies slowly. Once they can decently execute a strategy at lower speeds, you can slowly raise the speed and force them to execute their strategies faster reach time.
Of course the downside to teaching them this way is that most of us will go nuts if we try to play along with them at these speeds
When I first started SC, I only mostly played compstomps and with RL friends, and I think I played at normal speed for at least two years. I didn't know about the speed changes then either, and one day my friend switched it to fastest to mess around and I was like "OMG WTF?!?" I freaked out and we remade the game on normal speed.
Come to think of it, I don't know when/how I adapted to playing at fastest speed.
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What UMS maps would you guys recommend I play with him.
It will need to be something fun that won't really require much apm because this was my first day playing with him and he was like..........soooooo slow and didnt spend at all however he got 8 pylon 10 gateway whilst constantly pumping probes down.
So I guess it went quite well and he knows how to hotkey.
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i got my girlfriend to play also.
she has a lot of motivation, but also, lack of time.
she thought it was cool because:
1. SC is totally underground
2. Speed in which pro players play
3. SC superstars
4. Me constantly bringing up Korea
to bring a player into SC, they have to have some kind of a competitive spirit. its all it takes.
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United States12607 Posts
Grobyc, you are one of my favorite TL.net posters. Serious. It's not like every post you make blows me away, but you always have something sensible to say and you write in complete sentences.
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actually, you need to know if your friend is a casual or hardcore player. I had one casual player friend who I needed to show him all the basics, and play a lot of comp-stomp and UMS for him to start to enjoy the game. and I also had one hardcore player, I tried the same method but he wasn't enjoying, so I show him some FPVODs and told him about all the korean progaming stuff and he started to download replays, play agains people on bnet, and in the end he enjoyed even more than the casual player friend.
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On February 25 2009 04:34 JWD wrote:
Grobyc, you are one of my favorite TL.net posters. Serious. It's not like every post you make blows me away, but you always have something sensible to say and you write in complete sentences.
Thank you
And yeah, once in a while I gotta do a little trolling or something haha.
On February 25 2009 03:30 TechniQ.UK wrote:
What UMS maps would you guys recommend I play with him.
It will need to be something fun that won't really require much apm because this was my first day playing with him and he was like..........soooooo slow and didnt spend at all however he got 8 pylon 10 gateway whilst constantly pumping probes down.
So I guess it went quite well and he knows how to hotkey.
It sounds like it's going good then. My friend really enjoys 'Special Forces(Legends usually)', defenses are pretty good, he likes random micro, ive told him about builders and fighters but he hasn't yet tried them so I don't know about that quite too much. Mostly games where he doesn't have to concentrate on a bunch of things going on in the map or multitask too much(like diplomacy or golems for example; In Special forces he just focuses on his one powerful unit, rarely has to do anything else other than upgrade and build more units(which are easy to do with the click of a hotkey), With random micro he is able to learn the various uses and abilities of units and doesn't have to take his eyes off the screen for anything else, etc. You could also try 'Evolves', an RPG, or a bound.
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My advice, throw games to them. Noobs are not clever enough to notice how rediculously stupid it was for you to suicide your entire army, and they sure do appreciate the win and it encourages them to play on. Getting pwned just makes you give up. This is what I did and it worked to get a friend of mine into it, now I dont throw games I need to work hard to get the win.
And do some 2v2 3v3 or whatever against the AI, use entropy 2 from broodwar ai which is stronger than the stock ai and doesnt do lame things like 4 pool and zelot rush, this also helped get my friends into it. When your noob friends can defeat entropy 2 then use Ahzz as it cheats but is not too hard to beat. After this they should have enough skill to atleast have some idea what there doing in 1v1 games against a person.
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EPT
