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The most problematic part of BW for SC2 players is spending 45 minutes waiting to do a game with a "proper" build and getting bunker rushed on your ramp > .
A close second is spending 10 minutes finding a game where a probe blocks your hatch for 2 full minutes because you can't micro BW's tard workers.
I think, and I'm entirely serious and not just venting, that a lesson in worker micro is a necessity, because if you can't micro as Zerg, probes are more powerful than your whole race, and strategy is pointless. (Which isn't a balance whine, I just suck, etc etc)
Anyway. *Cough*.
Let's get back on topic. (But I did win a game against a Terran because I had lurkers and he apparently didn't know science vessels detected!)
What should the series of videos look like, in order? Maybe something like
1. A brief overview of Brood War. Really basic stuff, like what introductions to the units. Carriers are good. Arbiters are jailbait motherships. Stim is effectively free with medics. Etc.
2. How to make a game. Like 80% of ICCUP apparently doesn't know how to host, and no way SC2 players will be able to figure out you need to fuck with your router without being told because that's stupid. Also, basic ICCUP knowledge like "If you have to download a map, the guy's probably cheating" and "Don't play people with the antihack disabled"
3. Mechanics. Day[9]'s overview of SC2's mechanics ran 2-3 hours, so BW's should be a miniseries, really, because BW is more of a micro/macro game.
4. How not to die in the first five minutes because jesus fuck i hate everything and everyone that has ever existed or will exists probes are so bullshit jegus gog.
5. Basic builds.
6. Base Layout
7. How to scout, and what to look for, by matchup.
8. More advanced builds.
Etc.
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I'll be there watching this. I'm not going to make a permanent switch, but I am still interested in playing BW somewhat competitively.
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Ribbon, what do you spend that 45 minutes on? Just forward your ports. T___T I can find games in a matter of couple of minutes at most, usually it's about half a minute.
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This will be useful. Give us some good pointers so we can start flooding ICCup with games.
Played first game on ICCup yesterday, got 2-3 as protoss. Too bad the 2 win are not in my record. The level difference is just huge, and to win in BW is just way more rewarding.
PvT going 1gate FE (have to learn obs timing), PvZ Forge FE (again have to learn obs timing) and PvP going 1 gate core into 2 gate reaver, trying harass. Choosing a build and trying to execute is the easy part, the real problem is: mechanics and scouting information. I've been watching BW for a year now, but I can't translate anything I see into good pointers for what the other player is doing. Today I just know that early lair will probably mean mutas lol
I won't be playing SC2 for some time...
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More important guys:
BW units are really, really stupid. 
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If you make a game on iccup on a motw map or popular non-motw map, someone will join often in 10 seconds no matter what time in the world. 45 minutes? wtf
I recommend anyone that is struggling with the learning curve to play only protoss. No matter what any protoss player may thing, protoss has a learning curve completely different from that of zerg and especially terran. With protoss you can quickly get D+ and C- whereas with Z and T it will take you 4x or more as many games to do so.
SC BW is a better game than SC2 but it was one weakness. It isn't as balanced as SC2. Blizzard never tried to even balance SC BW. It is only balanced at progamer level in Korea by Kespa through maps.
Then the main thing is mechanics. You need to get this right right away or else you will develop bad habits.
Then, play safe macro oriented builds. You are going to have to play without trying to get a strategic edge. Theoretically you want to outexpand your opponent in PvP, for example. Instead, decide to lose a bit of an advantage on all these risk management decisions.
In PvT, almost always use 2 gate observer, for example. Don't do 12 nexus builds or 1 gate 3 nexus builds, etc.
PvZ, always FE into corsair scout.
These builds are to make things strategically easy and to focus on laying a good foundation. You can't play strategically if you don't understand the strategy. And strategy is far from obvious.
The big challenge here is to stop all the cheeses and allins that interrupt and prevent you from executing your set build.
Doing a DT build properly will get you to C- fast. But this is just throwing dice. You can just as well throw a few real dice and then call yourself a C- protoss player. Who cares? Same can be done with 4pool, but DT builds are way more solid when it doesn't insta win.
Compare your first minutes to the perfect play of progamers. You can lose only a few seconds. Check the supply of your games that unfold exactly the same way with progamers. Top foreigner amateurs isn't good enough because unlike in SC2, there's a huge gap between them.
At first you can check the first 4 minutes. But after a time you want to be only a few seconds and a bit of supply behind even for 11 minutes, in a macro game.
Get a practice partner from who you will lose 70% of the time. These are the best. 50/50 isn't good enough. You want to lose because you want to play someone who is better. She or he will fix the gaps in your game by exploiting them and making you lose. But it won't be a rofl stop because you will win at some point. Now in SC2 you will have 70% chance to win because of luck/cheese/randomness against players that rofl stomp you. But in SC BW it is different. The games will be won through strategic knowledge or mechanics.
Get a teacher. If you are really low level getting a teacher is helpful.
Iccup at E ranks I think will be extremely soft. Much softer than random people on bnet, who are hackers anyway. I see such weak players at D level sometimes. E level must be a lot of clueless and complete beginners.
If anyone wants some lessons, I think I can give some advice to below D and D protoss and terrans to help them improve their game. I think I can lay a really good foundation for players that are starting out and willing to learn. I am not a top player but I have given the pedagogy of SC BW a little thought. I also have a good practice UMS somewhere that I made years ago with an iccup friend. But I prefer to do the 100% serious result oriented advice. Therefore, for some people I do agree with what Testie once recommended. Go do a bunch of 3vs3 hunters games. I think many people like Idra actually come from fast money maps. For some reason, many people weren't initially interested in standard 1vs1 on progamer maps.
So yes, I think guidance is a lot more important in SC BW. In SC2 you can just jump on the ladder and go 50/50. On iccup you will always go 33/66. And just jumping into the D ranks on iccup knowing nothing won't do you any good.
No actually, maybe it will. But there is a lot of risk for bad habits and reactionary play. I guess not so much for SC2 people than for complete new people. But sometimes you see people who start to play completely defensive and passive and are only playing to not lose in the first 5 minutes and develop a completely wrong and weak strategical approach to the game. This is because they were too reactionary after misidentifying why they lost.
If you play the correct build without the mechanics, you will lose. The solution is not to change the build, but to keep losing exactly that way until it doesn't happen anymore. A very counter intuitive approach.
And this is also why a teacher can help so much.
I am in EU time zone and it's summer holiday. I can help out 3 people at max. No zergs, sorry. So pm me if interested.
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On June 29 2011 12:58 Ribbon wrote:Show nested quote +On June 29 2011 12:20 ZeroChrome wrote:On June 29 2011 08:59 Ribbon wrote:On June 29 2011 08:00 ZeroChrome wrote:On June 29 2011 07:56 Ribbon wrote:On June 29 2011 07:18 ZeroChrome wrote:On June 29 2011 03:50 Ribbon wrote:
I actually go 2 base hydra into 3 base hydra. I'm not saying "one base hydra is a good build". It's not. I'm saying you should do it until you feel you can't do it any better, then improve the build to make it more complicated. Once you've got 1a2a5sh down and you're not getting supply blocked or anything, you change your build so that so FE and go 1a2a3a4sh5sh. Once I feel I've mastered that, I'll add another lair of complexity (lurker contain, probably), and on and on and on. Eventually, if I play enough to feel comfortable in my mechanics, I'll take up a pro level build.
You don't do it because it's good, you do it because it's simple. It's easier to learn starcraft one thing at a time, and once you've mastered one thing, do another. When you can look at a replay, and honestly go "I did nothing wrong, I only lost because my build sucked and not because I executed it perfectly", you can improve the build.
seriously dude, what kind of advice is this? It doesn't matter how well you can mass hydras off 2 hatch and all in, you will NEVER go anywhere. As other people have said, all you are doing is slowing down your own learning process. It's pro advice. From the mass queen VOD Destiny (Paraphrased): If you're below diamond and you're asking for lessons, this is how are lessons are going to go. I'm going to say "Here, try this simple one-base build" like one-base roach. And once you feel like you can't do it any better, I'll say "Now make it a little more complicated; add in an expansion". And if you do that well, you'll be in diamond, and then we can start talking about strategy. I swapped out the word "Roach" and replaced it with "Hydra". Day[9] takes I guess a more middle of the road view, but is also about mastering one thing before doing another. He tells you to do the "right" build but only focus on making the right buildings. And once you're done with that, start focusing on maintaining constant unit production. Or something along those lines. This isn't even really a "mechanics vs strategy" thing. My belief is that you should focus on mechanics, and then start focusing on strategy, rather than trying to learn everything all at once. I spent like a week just focusing on not looking at my base (and using hotkeys) after Day[9]'s mechanics daily, and it gold me out of gold. Why does it apply to SC2 and not BW? You don't start by doing retarded builds, you start with a general build (1 rax FE, 3 hatch into 5 base, forge FE, etc) and then improve your mechanics while doing that. That way in addition to learning how to macro and multitask, information you glean from watching pro games is actually relevant. You say "start with a general build and work from there" I say "start with a simple build and work from there". It's actually not that big of a difference, I think. 1 rax FE is not a difficult build. Neither is forge FE. They are both simple, and yet are also the most effective choices for all players. You are giving basic pro strategies way too much credit. Maybe you can just stay off ICCUP entirely until you've mastered "making stuff on one base" and have moved to "making stuff off two bases", and play a bunch of games against the computer just practicing your build. I probably shouldn't have used Zerg as an example, because BW Zerg has the easiest macro of both games. Maybe Protoss just practicing maintaining constant probe production, not getting supply-blocked, and making gateway units off once base. And then once he's got that down, he can go forge FE, make probes out of two Nexi, and make gateway units out of the right number of gateways. And when he's got THAT down, he can start getting upgrades and go on ICCUP. You have too much of an SC2 perspective. Sure, your method of training would be effective in the tiered league system of SC2. However this is BW. That has nothing to do with BW vs SC2, it's ICCUP vs Bnet. ICCUP is not even the tiniest bit noob-friendly. It's sink or swim, and most people sink
Iccup is super friendly unless you're hardcore laddering. Last BW session I played a C+ (Im D) and he rolled me like 7 games in a row. But he went over reps with me after each one to tell me where Im lacking and questioning my decision making. Its helps a ton more to challenge yourself then to learn from the numerous mistakes you'll make then to 1base everything cause "macro is hard!!!"
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United Kingdom1685 Posts
Nice to see this thread becoming useful in a number of ways
Sorry episode one is taking a while- I want to be sure that once the first one has been put up, I can consistently manage more in pretty short timeframes.
I just felt bad for this guy- he means well, but some crucial information is missing SC BW is a better game than SC2 but it was one weakness. It isn't as balanced as SC2. Blizzard never tried to even balance SC BW. It is only balanced at progamer level in Korea by Kespa through maps
lol I hope he doesn't get corrected too hard...
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The stats balancing Blizzard did on SC BW doesn't compare to anything Blizzard has done on SC2. What they did is only fix game breaking things. You can actually roll back many stat changes and have a different map pool and the game would be just as balanced.
When Kespa makes their maps they don't look at balance for lower level players at all. Those map stats are meaningless. We actually have these stats because I asked for iccup if they could pull them out of their database. But they can only be used comparing one map to another map. Not one race with another race.
We all know that players start out playing protoss and switch to other races later. It skewers the result to compare the average protoss player with the average terran or zerg player because they are not equal.
SC BW being a balanced game is myth and dogma. SC BW is full of overpowered units and abilities. Lurkers can kill so many marines so fast. Marines can kill so many zerglings with stim and medics. Attacking across a minefield into siege tanks is suicide. Spider mines can kill so many units so quickly. Macroing is suddenly so easy if you can make ultras. Cracklings kill buildings so insanely fast. All these things would be different if you redesign a game from scratch since now we know about something called competitive RTS.
And in fact, we don't see this in SC2, despite people complaining about hard counters. SC BW, because of lack of balance, has way more and stronger hard counters than SC2.
It's funny you felt the need to link to Othello, an obscure unpopular map out of place in that list, which is one of the few maps where terran is strong because of the terrain.
Still, there's plenty of maps with 40% or 60% for one race with a large enough sample size. Anything not 49 or 51 is actually a big difference.
In fact, terran is stronger on most Blizzard maps. Map balance has nothing to do with the learning curve of a race and with the statistical potential and strength of a race.
SC BW has many things that would be instantly patched if they happened in SC2. Dark Swarm is just one example.
I hope a person with the name 'ImbaToss' who does not understand balance isn't going to get corrected too hard.
Making a video series for new players has been tried before. It doesn't really work. AT least, it didn't do so back then.
User was temp banned for this post.
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On June 30 2011 03:27 Hekisui wrote:
The stats balancing Blizzard did on SC BW doesn't compare to anything Blizzard has done on SC2. What they did is only fix game breaking things. You can actually roll back many stat changes and have a different map pool and the game would be just as balanced.
When Kespa makes their maps they don't look at balance for lower level players at all. Those map stats are meaningless. We actually have these stats because I asked for iccup if they could pull them out of their database. But they can only be used comparing one map to another map. Not one race with another race.
We all know that players start out playing protoss and switch to other races later. It skewers the result to compare the average protoss player with the average terran or zerg player because they are not equal.
SC BW being a balanced game is myth and dogma. SC BW is full of overpowered units and abilities. Lurkers can kill so many marines so fast. Marines can kill so many zerglings with stim and medics. Attacking across a minefield into siege tanks is suicide. Spider mines can kill so many units so quickly. Macroing is suddenly so easy if you can make ultras. Cracklings kill buildings so insanely fast. All these things would be different if you redesign a game from scratch since now we know about something called competitive RTS.
And in fact, we don't see this in SC2, despite people complaining about hard counters. SC BW, because of lack of balance, has way more and stronger hard counters than SC2.
It's funny you felt the need to link to Othello, an obscure unpopular map out of place in that list, which is one of the few maps where terran is strong because of the terrain.
Still, there's plenty of maps with 40% or 60% for one race with a large enough sample size. Anything not 49 or 51 is actually a big difference.
In fact, terran is stronger on most Blizzard maps. Map balance has nothing to do with the learning curve of a race and with the statistical potential and strength of a race.
SC BW has many things that would be instantly patched if they happened in SC2. Dark Swarm is just one example.
I hope a person with the name 'ImbaToss' who does not understand balance isn't going to get corrected too hard.
Making a video series for new players has been tried before. It doesn't really work. AT least, it didn't do so back then.
You just insist on trolling don't you?
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Are you?
If you don't post wrong things then others won't feel the need to post corrections. I am not hating on SC BW. I am just telling people the truth. SC BW isn't some magically perfect game.
If you want to know if SC BW is balanced on all skill levels, go ask the strongest foreign SC BW player we had.
I strongly dislike Blizzard. But what they are doing trying to balance SC2 is so much more advanced than what was done in SC BW. People shouldn't be tricked into playing SC BW over SC2 because it is more balanced because it isn't.
And games don't balance themselves, despite what Day9 wants people to believe.
If David Kim and his team was told to balance SC BW, using the methods, logic and reasoning they use on SC2, they would change a lot of things.
Fact remains that if macroing, multiasking and microing is too hard for new players when switching to SC BW, protoss is the best race to start with because it is much easier and much more forgiving. This has been known for years and for years we as the SC BW community have recommended new people to start with protoss first and then switch to the race they want to play later.
After all the bad posts we had from Ribbon, you are going to try to derail this in a balance debate because of the truths I have said?
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This is supposed to be a thread about helping players switch from SC2 to BW not a discussion about how you feel balance works at amateur level. Even if Ribbon's posts are were misguided they were at least aimed at assisting new players improve their mechanics.
I really don't see what the point of discussing race balance at this level is anyway since the level of a player new to BW is joining at the better player is almost always going to win regardless of race.
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On June 30 2011 03:43 Hekisui wrote:
Are you?
If you don't post wrong things then others won't feel the need to post corrections. I am not hating on SC BW. I am just telling people the truth. SC BW isn't some magical perfect game.
If you want to know if SC BW is balanced on all skill levels, go ask the strongest foreign SC BW player we had.
I strongly dislike Blizzard. But what they are doing trying to balance SC2 is so much more advanced than what was done in SC BW. People shouldn't be tricked into playing SC BW over SC2 because it is more balanced because it isn't.
And games don't balance themselves, despite what Day9 wants people to believe.
Fact remains that if macroing, multiasking and microing is too hard for them when switching to SC BW, protoss is the best race to start with because it is much easier and much more forgiving. This has been known for years and for years we have recommended new people to start with protoss first and then which to the race they want to play.
After all the bad posts we had from Ribbon, you are going to try to derail this in a balance debate because of the truths I have said?
Are you implying that your assertions are somehow not derailing the thread? Your "truths" lack backing up. And all your examples of "overpowered" things in BW are quite poor in supporting your argument. "No it should be OK walking to a tank line through a mine field, tanks are immobile as hell, let us make them useless in positional play too!" or "let's lower crackling dps so they become useless lategame". I mean seriously? Sounds like your ultimate balanced game should have no units with no abilities doing nothing.
OK. Your underlying argument is "BW is not balanced in sub pro levels". I give you FS played by people in iccup 51% 49.28% 47% from almost 35k games. Now to me this sure as hell breaks your "truths", if you disagree, please, elaborate. Oh and if you consider those statistics imbalanced feel free to give examples of superior balance.
EDIT: @Pifualkd: I agree that this is no place for this kind of discussion, however, the scenario where new people come to this thread and find some spouting how everything in BW is overpowered, imbalanced and should be patched go unchallenged makes me sick.
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If you want to have a balance discussion, go make a new threat. There you can ask what it actually means for stats to be 51% 49.28% 47% on FS.
Problem is, everyone knowledgeable who knows English either left the SC community or is playing SC2.
I suggest you do a search instead because both balance, map balance, iccup stats and all the examples I gave are already discussed.
I made just 2 lines on the myth of perfect SC BW balance in my whole post, trying to help new players and offering help. You stopped reading the post there and then, you claim.
Your last line asking me for a map with stats nearer to 50% on iccup exactly shows how dishonest you are anyway about this whole debate and you are just argumentative for the sake of arguing.
Stop shitting up this thread.
[edit]
I never said SC BW should be patched. Don't be a liar. I said similar things would be patched in SC2.
This is pretty much a fact since Blizzard has made balance patches because of how things went in both the lower bronze leagues and the team matches.
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On June 30 2011 04:14 Hekisui wrote:
If you want to have a balance discussion, go make a new threat. There you can ask what it actually means for stats to be 51% 49.28% 47% on FS.
Problem is, everyone knowledgeable who knows English either left the SC community or is playing SC2.
I suggest you do a search instead because both balance, map balance, iccup stats and all the examples I gave are already discussed.
I made just 2 lines on the myth of perfect SC BW balance in my whole post, trying to help new players and offering help. You stopped reading the post there and then, you claim.
Your last line asking me for a map with stats nearer to 50% on iccup exactly shows how dishonest you are anyway about this whole debate and you are just argumentative for the sake of arguing.
Stop shitting up this thread.
Jeadong knows English.
No I'm asking for stats closer to 50% in this superiorly balanced game you are promoting.
Stop shitting up this thread.
You made your bullshit claims, I challenged them to make sure that people who are unaware don't mistake them for consensus opinion. If you really care for the quality of the thread, don't reply.
EDIT: It seems you don't care. But I do and I've already made my point, so that is over with. I'm sure you'll be fine on your own.
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Jaedong doesn't know enough English to do a balance debate. And he doesn't post here anyway. So stop being an outright liar.
I don't care what you ask for. It's a loaded and question with only meaningless answers. And even without all that, it is still an attempt at a straw man argument.
I made bullshit claims? You admit you don't even read my complete posts.
I have the very strong feeling you are very new to this community. I don't think you have the right to decide what has been the consensus in this community when you weren't even here most of the time.
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As a D player let me tell you what I think of BW balancing, because you see I speak English.
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United Kingdom1685 Posts
I'm asking, everyone, please don't get this thread closed. Open a new thread for offtpic fresh debates etc, I'm all for that. As far as we're concerned on the balance issue, it is 100% indisputably possible for any player from E to olympic standard, to crush another player, in any matchup, if they play a stronger game.
This is where guides etc come in: you can win. You must learn how.
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Both games are balanced at a pro level (Edit: And on Pro Maps. I imagine BW's balance is screwy on the official Blizzard ladder maps no one plays). People made charts and stuff for thousands of pro SC2 games and found all matchups balanced since April. No one needs to do that for BW because it's been around so long that the fact of it's balance is apparent and obvious to all.
Both games have, by design, lots of things that feel like OP bullshit, but if you can't counter it with your own race's OP BS, then you're just not good enough. Deal with it. Vent if you must (lord knows I do), but deal with it and play again.
In BW ZvP, a Dark Templar can walk into your mineral line and kill all your drones without an alert sound. That's ludicrous. Deal with it and pay attention to your bases.
In SC2 ZvP, a speed overlord with upgraded banelings can fly over your mineral lines, and by the time the alert sounds the Zerg will score 30 worker kills. Deal with it and pay attention to your minimap.
BW ZvT: Dark Swarm makes units immune to nearly all terran units. L2Micro.
SC2 ZvT: A player can marauder drop your main and kill all your tech super-fast while attacking on the other side of the map. L2Multitask.
BW: Lurkers can kill infinity marines if the Terran has bad micro
SC2: Infestors and Banelings can kill nigh-infinity marines if the Terran doesn't split.
BW: Reaver drops
SC2: Blue flame hellion drops (or baneling drops)
BW: "Vultures have zero build time and are free"
SC2: "Banshees are ranged DTs that fly"
BW: Probes can delay a hatch for like ten minutes because drone AI keeps forgetting about them
SC2: "You're protoss. You have buildings better than my race"
Etc etc etc. Learn to deal with it and win. Both games are balanced, in large part thanks to the maps they're played on in tournaments, and on private ladders like ICCUP (BW) and NTBL (SC2).
No whining. No tears. No regrets. Go forth and win with your imba units, as I go forth and win with mine.
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EPT
