EPTSecondly I would like to say that I said [L/G] in the front of the topic name because I am a silver league player, that this topic is more directed towards players in the lower tiers such as myself. It's not necessarily a "guide" of sorts, but it's not a question thread or a "what am I doing wrong" or discussion thread, so I chose those two together to try and accurately represent what I had planned for this thread. This might belong in the general portion of these forums, but seeing as how it is intended to help people, I thought it would be appropriate to place it here instead.
---------------------
This is intended to be at least somewhat helpful to the players between Bronze and Gold league, for I don't have any personal experience when it comes to Diamond and higher. All information that I will write down here has been collected largely by myself, with help from my brother, during the course of our plays of the game from the first days of the beta up until present day. I will post replays as they become available, and as I don't label most of my games after playing them, I have to dig through months and months of replays, so I am just going to write the bulk of this now, then edit in replays when I find myself with more time to be able to search through my files.
Part One - Tags and Classifications
In this early segment I am just going to go over what I encounter on a frequent basis and what titles I usually attach to such people/events/scenarios. Nobody will be specifically called out.
-----Silent
space reserved for replay)---------Silent refers to the people that simply don't say anything throughout the game.
---------Over many many months of playing StarCraft II, my brother and I have ran into numerous players like this. These types of people are generally easy to handle in any game map or setting on the ladder because 9/10 times the player who doesn't say anything has just come into this game while riding a losing streak, and so they are frustrated and don't feel like talking, even if it's just simple good mannered introduction.
---------Fighting these players will almost always result in a win due to the fact that they are angry or frustrated over certain losses, or multiple losses in a row and thus going into games upset throws their game off, forcing them to make mistakes easily exploited by you, regardless of what league you are in.
---------Their all-ins will seem rather easy to defend, and their harassment will feel rather weak in comparison to your defense.
---------Probability of facing this type of player: Around 12-13%.
-----Self-Assured
space reserved for replay)---------Self-Assured refers to players who only say "GL" and "LOL" throughout the entirety of the game.
---------When the game starts they will simply say "gl". This, at least in the lower tiered leagues such as gold/silver/bronze, will indicate that your opponent will try a type of play people commonly refer to as "cheese".
---------They hold themselves in high regard, because they look at their ladder wins and see high numbers such as 300-700 games won, when in actuality it makes themselves look as if they simply couldn't cut it at the higher leagues, and was subsequently demoted back down to a lower league. It is unwise however to purposefully tank games to stay in lower leagues for easy wins, as it can lead to getting your account permanently banned by Blizzard.
---------Probability of facing this type of player: Around 34-36%.
-----Criers
space reserved for replay)---------These types of people generally are the first ones to say something other than the over-all good mannered "Hi, good luck have fun" that most games start with. They spend alot of the early game telling you about how happy they are they were finally paired up against race X instead of race Y constantly.
---------The criers generally spend too much time in the early game typing out their story of reprieve to you, and their macro will slip, giving you a chance to exploit the situation by either expanding, or doing early pressure. One missed or delayed worker or unit when it was not necessary can potentially have lethal consequences.
---------A player such as this will 80% of the time will dedicate alot of time and resources to harassment units such as the Banshee or Hellion. If you know what units or structures to make to handle them, then it will put you in a fairly decent lead. Of course, assuming that this train of thinking will work the same on someone who is high diamond or up as it would on somebody gold or lower is wrong as the better players have encountered that many times before and if their harassment gets shut down, they can move on, instead of getting into the "uh, uh, uh what." zone in a play that was banking alot on harass.
---------Probability of facing this type of player: Around 9-13% depending on time of day.
-----Standard
space reserved for replay)---------These types of players are the ones that you run into most of the time while laddering. They will go into the game with a specific play in mind against whatever race you play. They will either execute it well or very poorly and it will cost them the game.
---------They also will 9 out of 10 times show good manners and say the standard "gl hf" once the game itself begins, but keep chatter to as minimal as possible as they just want to focus on playing and winning or playing and improving.
---------Probability of facing this type of player: 70-80%. In my opinion these are where the fun games happen.
----------------------------
With all that said, I would like to explain a little more as to why I chose to write this. I chose to write this because when I first got into silver, I still had a really hard time figuring out what to look for when I was scouting my opponents base, but one thing that was certain was that players who felt as if their harassment and cheddar play would out right win them the game generally said nothing, or acted sure of themselves and arrogant.
Over the months when my over-all assumptions got to about 85-89% probability of being accurate, I started figuring out how to deal with people such as this. Players, I found who simply said "GL" or acted arrogant would, if their initial cheese play was denied, and they didn't simply leave the game right afterward, they would try everything from going proxy gateway zealot rushes to mass Voidray, to mass Dark Templar. Now in my head, after the 10 minute mark cheese stops becoming cheese, but all the builds those particular players would fall back on were designed for early game pressure or to outright win the game fast, instead of transitioning into say 3gate robo or 4gate expand so on and so forth. All races are intended in this paragraph but I used protoss as an example as it's easier for protoss to go from say Voidray harass to dark templar all-ins than it is say terrans to go cloaked banshee into hellion drops. Yes you can do it, but in my opinion if they put up defenses for your cloaked banshees, what's the point of risking a Medvac with 200 minerals worth in its cargo space?
--------------
I guess seeing as how I did put [G] in the title I should at least add some tips or tricks I have found that help me out personally. The diamond and up players and professionals will most likely find no use out of this topic, and it's not really stuff you can do in-game to help, but stuff I, myself do outside of game that helps me when I am playing.
Part Two - Tips and Tricks
-----Boxing:
---------Just like boxing units while in-game, I practice boxing outside of the game as well. Whenever I am reading an article on teamliquid or idling at my desktop while thinking what to do, I am constantly boxing either the icons on my desktop, boxing a square around an image on my desktop background, or paragraphs I am reading.
---------I find that doing this, at least for me personally, makes it easier once I am in-game to box my units and split them, or just select them all or what have you. Doing it outside of StarCraft II makes it generally, once again at least for me, feel like boxing stuff in the game is more natural and gives myself a more fluid wrist movement and click timings.
-----R.E.M.
Rapid Eye Movement)---------I do this while outside of the game as well, such as right now. I will every now and then look at something, and shoot my eyes in different directions on the screen, like say reading this, and try to remember as many words or letters as I can as my eye speeds past everything.
---------I do this to try and increase my eye quickness, as well as my mental sharpness to help me "pick up" things I normally wouldn't. Also it helps me personally by keeping me from making my eyes "lazy" and only looking at what I currently have my mouse over, giving me constant vision of everything that is going on on my screen and minimap during the game itself.
-----Finger Macro:
---------I am a smoker, so I always have a lighter on me. As such to try and keep my fingers sharp as well as my mind, I will either spam grind the flint without hitting the gas on the lighter, or twirl it between my fingers as fast as I can.
---------I find that this helps me when I am playing StarCraft II, in situations where I need to push my macro that extra mile because my fingers will already be used to moving around quite a bit. Makes moving my fingers and hands from say Hotkey+1, to Hotkey+7 alot easier and smoother in my opinion.
---------If you don't smoke then don't ever start it's a bad habit, and from what I hear there is actually cyanide in cigarettes. If you don't know what that is, that's the stuff spies use to kill themselves in a hurry.
-----Typing:
---------One of the skills I think is invaluable to playing a game such as StarCraft II. I have really good typing skills. Well okay decent typing skills I guess, I can type out a full sentence, be watching the TV or talking to somebody while looking at them without ever looking at the keyboard or monitor and not miss a beat when I am typing something and know exactly when I have made an error and know how many spaces to go back and fix it.
---------I feel that the ability to do that is a huge asset to playing a RTS like StarCraft II because it completely erases the need to look at your keyboard to hit the key you need to, allowing you to keep your eyes in the game or on your mini map. My money is always staying fairly low, well for as low as it can be given my skill level, and my brother is in a higher league than I am, and his money pools very high because he is constantly having to look down at his keyboard to hit his shortcuts and macro/hotkeys.
-----Good Hy-gene:
---------Yes yes I know, should be common practice for everybody, but some people don't and I feel that it can really effect how your games play out. If you smell good, you'll feel pleased and not focus on yourself. If you stink, you'll smell yourself the whole time you are playing, and that is distracting.
---------Also, keep your fingernails trimmed. I don't know how many of my games I wasn't 100% in because I had broke a finger nail on my macro hand that had gotten too long and broke all the way down to the painful quick.
---------Keep your ears clean. Hearing "Your probes are under attack!" the moment it happens versus a second or two later because you've got earwax up the wazu can play a bigger part than you might think.
-----Anger:
---------This one is rather simple. Just simply don't play when you are angry, or are getting angry over loss after loss. Anger is a primal emotion, and as such practical logic and sensible thinking generally tends to go out of the window when you are angry, and will cause you to make mistakes while playing, resulting in major setbacks or even more losses.
---------If you find yourself getting angry, just walk away for say 10-15 minutes. Grab a soda or a water, a bite to eat, use the restroom or something and come back after you've been cooled down, and chances are you'll win that very next game.
---------Also, calling people names is a good way to get your account banned.
-----Winning:
---------Okay this might come off as an odd one to most people, but I suggest taking a break when you are on a winning streak. When you go on say a 3-4-5 game winning streak, you'll eventually find yourself in a situation where you have gotten comfortable and you'll let your guard down or will slack off somewhere else and your opponent will make you suffer for it.
---------Take like a 5-10 minute break after a good winning streak, then come back to it and play again so that you don't start slacking off accidentally and getting too comfortable.
-----Audio:
---------I suggest using in-game audio if you are still fairly new to the game. You watch the professionals do their streams and alot of them will play music while they ladder, but they already have something in higher supply than you do: Attention to detail.
---------Until looking at the mini map has become almost second nature to you, I would suggest using the in-game audio for a heads-up of what is happening. Once you have that in the bag however you can go back to your music if you want.
---------Audio is also really good for detecting when somebody is dropping a proxy in your base, or a nydus worm in your base.
--------------------
Okay well that is all I can think of right now for people that are more around me. I know it's not perfect and there are things higher level players can show you all on an individual basis that will work alot better, but if you feel you have a hard time spotting what structures mean what when you scout your opponent, then this might give you a general idea if you need to play defensively or if you can play aggressively early game.
I am very interested in any feedback you guys might have, and I will upload replays to help validate what I am talking about as I get the chance to dig through my replay folder. Sorry this is so long and thank you for taking the time reading this, even if you don't much care for what I had to say.
