I'm new to this forum as a member but not as a reader. Still I don't really know where to put this thread. Since I have found quite a few tutorial videos in this subpart of the forum I hope my little post might fit in here well enough.
I'm a German teacher who has been playing strategy video games for quite some time. I played Starcraft 1 back in the old days - not competetive, not even on the ladder, but I was around.
Since I obviously like teaching people, helping them to get better I got the idea of combining my two favourite tasks and streaming a webshow that is supposed to help total newbies into the game.
My little show has just started - so please don't expect brilliant image- and sound quality - but I hope it's fun and educational both at the same time.
Unfortunately for most readers, the show is completely broadcasted in German. I figured that there are a lot of English language tutorials out there that cover all sorts of Starcraft 2 problems and questions - but only a few in my mothertongue. That's why I decided to do a German broadcast ONLY! - At least for now. Given enough interest and feedback I might do English shows as well.
Although this is an English language forum, I see that there are many fellow countrymen participating here to justify at least a little hint to my webshow. If you are of different opinion or if I by chance violated a forum rule - please feel free to delete this post.
Without further delay these are the links to my shows broadcasted so far:
Finally the 7th part of the show is out. You can find the link in the archive list above. I would like to find a weekly time to broadcast live on a regular basis. Unfortunately I can't do more due to my full-time-job. I'll tell you more as soon as I've found a suitable time.
I'm still looking for replays of bronze and silver level players for my show. If your interested and would like to help me and others players of your rank, here is what I need.
1.) Kind of normal games of about 20 min. length. Nothing unusual, just straight-up play. 2.) Cheese play and early end. 3.) Long-term games that endure about 40 - 50 min. or longer 4.) You get rolled by Mass-Anything
You can send me replays via PM or post a link below. You can also watch show #007 for more details. It would be nice if you could change the name of your replay accordingly to the following example:
Matchup - Nickname - League - Kind of Replay e.g. PvZ - ExampleNick - Bronze - 6Pool
Show #011 is online now. I'm sorry that it took so long to produce a new show, but I was pretty ill and in addition couldn't speak for a few days afterwards.
Omg, a german teacher whos into starcraft! That'd have been huge (at least at the time I was in school... which was more like the starcraft 1 days). Anyways, I think you explain the basics pretty well (just skipped through the zerg macro tutorial). Try to get a broader viewer base by linking to your show in different forums of the german sc2 scene (homerj.de, instarcraft.de, etc).
Btw: is that the teachers room ("lehrerzimmer") you're casting from? It certainly has that functional, buro'ish look I'd expect in one of those. =)
Yes, it is - it's my bureau/classroom you can partly see in the background. I'm mostly teaching in my private institute, sometimes teaching at public school as well. Thanks for your support by linking my show. I really appreciate it.
By the way, I've been into video games since I was about 8 years old. My first console was Mattel's Intellivison and my first Computer was a Schneider CPC with a datasette-drive, where it took about 15 minutes to load a game :D
I played StarCraft 1 with friends at LAN-Partys a lot and I still have it installed on all of the computers at my bureau, so that we can play a short game whenever old friends are around.
I sometimes use video games for teaching purposes as well, especially for English lessons where good old LucasArts Adventure Games become a very useful tool in supporting the learning effects of pupils.
Just took a look into your Zerg Macro Video. I gotta admit, it is pretty well done! I am a highly ranked Master League Zerg so it doesn*t really help me out too much anymore, but it's great for lower league players!
I would advice you, writing a news on German forums, such as mystarcraft.de or even the battle.net forums, in order to get more viewers on your videos!
@Ballbreaker: I've already done this and posted links on several German forums including Mystarcraft.de and others. But none of these threads got even remotely close to the number of views I have got on teamliquid so far
I think it's normal that it takes some time until the "word spreads" of new content on the Internet - so I just have to be patient and keep on producing. The rates my videos get viewed are already rising ;-)
And don't forget: I still need bronze- and silver replays of all sorts, mostly of cheese and you dying to early aggression. So if you'd like to be part of the show, feel free to submit to creative-learning@gmx.de
Yeah - sure. I normally do about one show each week, unless work or illnesses get in my way. I upped three videos just recently, but maybe the comments made you overlook them?
I'm still looking for replays, especially you getting six-pooled. So if you'd like to help me please send your Bronze/Silver replays to creative-learning@gmx.de
you should post something on german forums like the ones of fragster.de instarcraft.de and on readmore.de u can even add ur stream-url so ppl will see when ur stream is online.
i would have loved to have a "nerdteacher" back in my schooldays ^_^
Well, I already have threads on 4 German forums, including the German Battle.Net forum. Still - my thread views combined on these forums are lower than my views on TL :D
My stream is added on TL now - so you can see when I'm live, which is actually only once a week right now, due to being self-employed
I'll have a look at readmore.de though - thanks for the advice
Thank you very much. I hope the show will evolve itself together with its viewers and feature mid- to high level tactics analysis in the not so far future as well.
Unfortunately, there seems to have been a problem with the recording of this episode, cutting off a substantial part of the intro. I'm very sorry for that!
lol i need to visit tl to find a german show Nice show creativelearningtv, myself is also a dinosaur, having studied when the original SC was released love your archives
I'm sorry for all the non-german speakers but there are plenty of webshows in English language that I just thought that another one wouldn't make any difference. In German language - however - there aren't as many of them. That's why I decided to do it in my mothertongue.
I might be doing some content in English as well in the future but I haven't got any plans right now.
As I've mentioned in several shows so far, I'd like to hold a small tournament for bronze and silver leaguers and now it's finally time for it:
On the following Saturday and (if need be) Sunday (March, 3rd - March, 4th) the Starcraft 2 for Beginners Bronze & Silver Tournament shall take place.
I know it's on pretty short notice but unfortunately this weekend has suddenly shown up as free in my time-planer and if I don't do it now it will probably take me 2 more months to do it - so now seems to be the best time.
I chose the double-KO-system because a) it reminds me of my old-school Pool-Billard days, b) it's not as frustrating as single elimination and I know how frustrating it can be to be full of expectations right before the tournament starts and then just be thrown out first round and c) it doesn't take as long as the group play system, especially since I want to cast and commentate EVERY game.
Since I've got no idea how many people are interested in such a tournament, how many can actually participate on such short notice and, as I've said, I'd like to offer you an as less frustrating tournament experience as possible, where I can still cast every match, the maximum ammount of players is limited to a total of 8 (yeah, I know it's very few). Nevertheless I think a lot more people can register. Experience tells us that many people register but don't show up. So the chance that people will get in on tournament day is high enough.
Because it's my first tournament of this kind, it's probably going to be awful. Technology is going to fail, my commentaries will be full of stutter, mistakes and thing that don't add up, pauses will be embarrassing and organisational problems are pre-programmed - in other words: it will be a lot of fun!
Wenn ihr daran teilhaben wollt, dann klickt auf den unten folgenden Link. Dort stehen alle Formalitäten, die ihr benötigen solltet.
If you want to be a part of it, please click on the following link (German only). You should find all formalities you need.
Well it´s awesome to hear that some teachers are also involved in esports! Why aren´t you at the school I attend? =( It may be a weird or even a rude question but could you tell me how old you are? I appreciate the show but since it´s for beginners only I think I can´t learn from it. :D
I'm in my thirties - and I've played all sorts of games since I was a little boy. My first console was Mattel's Intellivison and my first computer a Schneider CPC with datasette drive. First IBM PC was a 386, 33 MHz using DOS 5.0. That might explain why I'm so into videogames :D
Unfortunately, we had some difficulties with the tournament due to flamers, skill-fakers and stream cheaters, although it was supposed to be just a fun tournament for 8 players without any price money at all. Sometimes I don't understand today's peoples' attitude...*sigh*
I plan to upload the VODs of the different games to my YouTube channel soon. Until then you have to use the link above, if you're interested in watching the cup.
I question I ve got ,maybe to mention ,that ,I am currently at Episode 12 and playing Protoss ( thougt I am studying your videos most of time ,and they are quite long to view,so I am a little behind with practice,) I would knew to know when to consider building a extension,because I ve read ,that probes get ‘‘wasted“ if you have a certain number of them and only one base.
Anyways many thanks and your work is greatly appreciated.
A normal base is best saturated with 22 workers - 16 for minerals and 6 for both geysirs. At that point you will get the optimal balance between working time and ressource gathering.
You CAN saturate up to 30 workers to get an even higher collection rate - but you're effectively over-saturating the base then. Everything above 30 workers is a waste. So you should have a base up before then. However - if it's (for some reason) not possible for you to get a base until that point, it's still okay to produce workers for the point when you finally secure one and split your workers. You will profit from your workers then. Unless, of course, you've never planned to get a base up anyway because you wanted to do a one base all-in push.
If you're a lower league player it's actually not bad if you oversaturate. Most beginners suffer from producing too few workers - so having more than you actually need is fine in the beginning - you can work back from then.
I've just looked into these scripts and watched the beginning of a video. This is actually pretty good. Sadly I'm already Masters so I can't learn much from it anymore but for any german beginner this is really really good.
Pretty good stuff! If i were in a lower league, i´d watch every episode. Keep up the good work and try some acupuncture. It can help you with your decease.
If I'm honest, I didnt like your show, however, I have to admit that I only watched half of an episode (#056 - zerg vs. terran). I watched the part of definding a bunker rush. You suggest not opening hatch first because of bunker rushes. While this might be a viable solution for bronze players, this is a bad approach in improving long-term. The zerg made many mistakes after opening hatch-first (he scouted no rax so he could throw a pool at 14, stop droning, throw a spine at the expo, 2 queens and lings immediatly, move the overlord away). Instead of focussing on these mistakes, you just suggest opening pool-first which will usually put you behind against a good terran. Your approach seems to be helping guys out of bronze league but with this kind of style your students won't improve above gold league, I think.
I get what you mean - however - if opening hatch first is better or not is still debated by several gamers, even the top ones. True: Not opening hatch first puts you economically behind against a lot of openings. But: We've seen professional players die to cheese because they decided to go hatch first (remembering games played by TLO, Bly and Idra, just to name a few). If those guys can die to cheese, then what about newbies?
The other point is: Even if your "behind" economically by going pool first - does it even matter? And from which league on does it matter? A lot of people are debating that these small economical differences start to matter only from Masters League upwards. The relevant question is: "Is not starting hatch first REALLY costing ME games (in my league)?" I've talked to Zerg players in Master and Grandmaster League and got no clear statement which everyone of them could totally agree with.
Some say: "Always hatch first - it's the best you can do - you can hold everything with queens and drones if need be - your micro just has to be good enough!"
Others say "You CAN hatch first, when your scouting is good AND you know what to do with the data!" (which, to be brutally honest, even a lot of players in Diamond can't)
True: No one says: "Never go hatch first - it's suicide!" - But they are very good player at there race - miles and miles better than people just starting with the game or hanging around in Bronze to Gold.
Remember: Excercising cheesy builds is MUCH MUCH easier than defending them.
Of course you could argue that it's better to start with the "difficult-to-defend-but-economically-more-effective"-builds as soon as you can in order to have a good basis for the next few lessons you are going to learn. But then again you could also argue that "losing about 80% of your games in leagues that are known for their high cheesy build percentage" is so frustrating that a lot of people will stop playing because it makes them mad.
What I want to say is: Teaching is a matter of concept. When you try to teach a complex game like Starcraft there is much to learn for a person new to it, which means there is so much you can start with - but it's most important to keep their frustration level as low as possible to keep them going (of course without teaching them totally useless garbage - which I think I don't). To keep them wanting to improve. A learning person has to quickly realize improvement or else most of them will start losing interest.
Of course some people might see that differently - but different people are different and learn in a different way. I cannot respond to anybody.
As you might or might not know, I am a teacher in real life, teaching Mathematics, English and German - and I've been doing it quite successfully for over 12 years - so I think I know a bit about how to teach people things. I don't claim to use the perfect method - actually I don't think there IS a perfect method. If something like that could even exist then it would be only a perfect method for each individual.
I know that my method CAN work for people since they wrote me e-mails about my show helping them. Most advance to Gold and Platinum easily, some even hit Masters (which, I know, is not only due to my show, of course). Sure, I never get to hear from people failing by using my method - and even if I did it would be difficult to evaluate whether it was the mistake of the method or just the mistake of the pupils using it, since it DID work for others.
Then again, this text might overdo it: Advising (not ordering, mind you) beginners to rather avoid hatch first to make it easier for them to defend against cheese (which they eventually WILL be facing a lot) is not really a question of concept or method. It's just a tool to keep the frustration level low as long as you're trying to internalize other, (in my opinion) more important things.
Starcraft 2 for Beginners is less about openings, build-orders and metagame trends - it's NOT about the "You MUST do THIS or else you're a stupid noob!" - It's more about concepts of strategic gameplay and what you need to keep in mind when you want YOUR strategy to work. I don't want to teach people what they should play in order to be most successful at this game in the shortest amount of time - I want to help people evolving THEIR game. That doesn't necessarily mean that they have to follow the unwritten metagame-rules. In fact: Often times I even encourage my students to oppose said rules, to try something crazy or even suicidal just to see and realize for themselves how a certain concept of the game works.I want my students to CHOOSE in full awareness of things - not to follow given build-orders and alleged rules like trained monkeys.
Of course, when teaching you cannot (and should not) absolutely avoid the standards - that's when shows like the one you've seen come into play - and the disagreement with certain points of the video unfolds to its horrible beauty.
Whether one "likes" this concept or even considers it to be worthwhile is, of course, totally up to oneself - but it's the concept I deliberately chose to use. Is this good - is this bad? I don't think it can be answered in a general way. It can only be answered by everybody individually.
Nevertheless I thank you very much for your feedback. Reflecting about it really helped me to understand why my show might be less popular among players seeking quick and easy guides to be more successful (and not necessarily better).
Starcraft 2 for Beginners will stop broadcasting. I want to thank all of the viewers and supporters for this really beautiful time and I hope that I could at least help a few of you having more fun when playing the game. Thank you very much!
Uhh.. I did not even finish all episodes yet and now you stop? Really sad but I totally understand. Now you should have way more time to play instead of managing and producing your show Nevertheless you can really be proud on hanging in there for 64 episodes!!! Good Job! Cu ingame
keep up the good work. i like to think of my self of a student of the german language and since i like sc2, this helps me out quite a bit. i don't know if you've covered this idea in any of your shows, since i've not watched them all, but i like to think of sc2 'strategy' as a system of trade-offs. for example the debate you had w/ the fellow critical of your defense of a bunker rush as zerg illustrates my idea well. choice 1: hatch first yields greater economy; sacrifices early defense. choice 2: pool first yields early unit production and slower economy. in other words, when choosing a strat (even a cheesy one), you can't do everything at once, so you make a 'gamble' that your choice is successful. as one plays some games and becomes familiar with the whole 'strategy' idea (instead of just learning the units, controls and so forth), i think it important to know the relative outcomes of each trade-off. that way one at least knows 'what to watch out for' and potential compensations. in the bunker rush scenario, for example, i know if i go hatch first, i could see trouble in a bunker rush, so i need to be extra active with a scouting overlord and/or drone, so i can react in time. if i go pool first, i can use a couple of lings to scout and for map control, while i focus on the remainder of my build. i know this is a gross simplification and i hope the idea comes through. thanks.
With HOTS being out now there's a Beginners Tutorial for the Zerg race. If you haven't played Starcraft 2 before but by playing the campaign you're encouraged to lead the Zerg into the field, please have a look:
Starcraft 2 for Beginners - #065 Beginner's Course: Zerg Part 1: Part 2: Part 3:
i like what you are doing here - keep it up . I completly agree with your approach to the game and went on the same path to improve my play. Sadly i noticed your show just now and watched only the first few episodes [ bit to late for me i guess ]. Loving your show i wonder if there is a way i can contribute a little bit to what you are doing - maybe sit in the chat @ the live stream helping out. I would like to hear your ideas on that.
Anyways - Im looking forward to your live stream the next Monday ( Are you streaming at Easter ? ). Yours sincerely, Thyriaen, the friendly Terran player
Hey, thanks for your nice words. Unfortunately I cannot stream every Monday anymore. I can only manage to do these types of videos at an irregular rate, whenever I find some time and motivation to do it.
I might stream on Easter - not dure yet. I normally announce when I stream on Facebook to make up for the inconvenience.
My holiday starts on Monday so I hope to get out some stuff during the next week.
I don't have a twitter account (and don't plan to get one) and I don't want to overextend my usage of this thread for advertising my stream, either, since TeamLiquid has a totally understandable policy about that.
Today we have a special feature: An interview with Julia Syrer aka "uzi" - Probably Germany's only female Master Protoss player. Uzi has been playing Starcraft since Broodwar. She took part in the National Finals for the World Cyber Games from 2005 - 2009 and has been Top 8 Master on EU and NA servers ever since the Masters league came into existence.
I'm already translating the whole interview to English to add subtitles to parts 1 and 3 of the interview (part 2 is a game analysis and I might add it later) - so if you don't speak German, please have a look at these videos again later.
#067 - Starcraft for Beginners meets: Julia Syrer aka "uzi" - Germany's only female Master Protoss player Part 1: Part 2: Part 3:
The reason I ask, is that our Group: Bronze Practice (EU is active, not the other regions) get a lot of newbies in, guys that have maybe played only 10 games vs AI, and then they want help for ladder. These guys then hardly knows what a-move means, or how to follow a build order, so I am looking for a beginners guide for SC2 to link for them just so they can get the basic fundamentals taught to them through a serious similar to this thread, but in English.
I would like to produce some of these beginner shows in English during my summer holidays - which are in about one week. So mabye you want to have a look again later
I was thinking about using a good unit tester and testing every unit against eachother and calculating the resource and supply efficiency of it all. Then I would need someone who can program stuff to build a insta-calculator where you input your race and the enemies race and input enemy units and it will bring up the specific top several units to counter that unit and another list that lists the top several units against their combination of units when all numbers are crunched together.
The testing part wouldn't be so bad it would take me about a year, but it would be soooo much info that we would need a calculator if we ever wanted to use it in a real situation. Plus the enemy might have for example: zerglings and hydra and marines might be a good counter to zerglings and tanks might be a good counter to hydra but hydra might be a good counter to marines and zerglings might be a good counter to tanks so it would have to be calculated a unit that was fairly good against BOTH zerglings and hydras.
Ofcourse I could just have a list for each of the match ups in my Word and whenever I encountered unit combinations I could try to find the "common denominator" of which was the best against all of them or some of them, but I dont know how well that would work in every situation.
I would do the match ups with one point in each upgrade and the amount of units would be 10-50 10 for big units 50 for small ones. I don't know yet but I may have to repeat each match several 10-20 times to get a good median result if the results appear different every time. I would match them by resources or supply then use that magic math stuff i learned in middle school to level it out for the other variable saving me the need to do all the units all over again. It would be about 650 match ups according to my calculations. ~14 units per race = 42 units. 42 x 42 = some amount x .6 = some amount but imagine there will be some combination i wont be able to do like units that cant attack ground or air, workers, and possible spellcasting units. so its more like 11 per race or 33 x 33 x .6 or 653.4 matchups ill have to do. I added them all up its actualy more like 563 matchups but yeah assuming its 20 seconds per battle 15 battles for accuracy or 5 minutes per matchup x 6 so like 30 minutes a day so in like 100 days I'll have the results, or if I do 15 minutes per day it'll be 200 days. Either way not bad.
So it would take into account all variables like range and movement speed and aoe and armor and damage to hp ratio and all that because it would all be real battles not theorycrafting.
But dont worry i dont think this takes all the fun or magic out of starcraft, we still need to figure out build orders and when to attack and defend and harass and scout and we still need to micro and macro and use spells and all that. Im just sick of not knowing for real what any counters really are. I think alot of things people think are counters really arent so Im out to prove whos wrong and whos right. Plus it doesnt take into account stuff like how faster movement speeds help units scout or transport better. Or how sight range effects. And it wont be fully accurate because there are invisible units and units that cant attack ground or air so that will add some mystery to it. It kinda takes out all these hours of attempting at becoming a better strategist and actually makes you one. Lol.
It seems like a lot of work - and I don't want to discourage you to do it, if you really want to, but I really don't know if it would be as useful a tool as the numbers tempt to make one believe so. Knowing what should be the most cost efficient unit to fight another on paper is one thing, but Starcraft 2 consists of so much more than only numbers and what really IS cost efficient depends on so many variables like skill, positioning, amount of units aso. I don't think it's possible to "calculate" all these variables, especially since the human factor counts a lot as well.
I wish I could understand these! I am currently really interesting in starting my own content production and this series is a huge inspiration to me! Great effort man! For everyone who speaks German I bet this is an amazing resource.
It's supposed to help beginners see what their typical mistakes are when starting to play the game. At first Starcraft seems to have so many options, so many things to look at that most beginners are plainly overwhelmed by all the input that they just lose track of what to do first. I hope with some example games I can reach new players struggling with the same problems shown during the episodes, helping them to fix their own issues.
Making subtitles for 3 parts, each about 30 minutes long unfortunately is really tough work - and I'm doing all of this by myself. I'm really sorry. There was a point when I wanted to do some shows in English as well, but then again, there's is so many stuff already available in English that I considered it to be too redundant to put the effort into it. I might still be doing it at some point in the future. At least with selected content.
EPT
