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Now, since I meddled with campaign in normal mode while I was way back in silver, I have not touched it ever since, until now, because of my sudden obsession with that Kerrigan portrait. Of course, I've come a long way since, and I've managed to accomplish that without too much trouble, but what I noticed is that you actually need a decent level of multitasking and macro to stay on top of things when playing the campaign in brutal mode, especially so in the later missions, so much so that I really do not believe anyone below gold/plat can possibly have enough macro/multitasking to keep up the attacks and stuff.
So if anyone wants to find alternative/new ways to improve your general skill (at least for terran players, could apply to other races as well if you just want to improve in general), and you're like bronze or silver, or possibly gold, I feel like playing brutal mode campaign and focusing on SCV production, not getting supply blocked, constant unit production and keeping your $$$ low could be a good way to do so. The best part is, you can save whenever you want, so like, just before a big fight, if you feel like your macro is slipping, you can practice that fight over and over again until you can macro well during fights.
What do you guys think?
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I went about to clear brutal mode when I was still in silver. It's true that the final missions were rather hard, but lot of them can be cleared with with turtle tactics that really do not translate well to the multiplayer side of the game. Most of it involves defensive lines, and massing units behind that without paying attention to the enemy. Early pressure makes no sense at all, since the objectives are mostly static.
But for a complete beginner that got into sc2, and played the campaign on normal, i guess it wouldn't hurt to try to clear it on brutal bit later to see how it is.
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Zurich15328 Posts
Campaign is an absolute waste of time regarding your 1v1 skill. Not only will you not learn anything, more likely you'll develop bad habits and actually lower your skill.
Where do you think the tens of thousands of Kerrigan portraits in Bronze come from?
If anything, play 1v1 against the AI, which is actually good for practicing build timings, worker production, supply, etc. Or just man up and hit that Find Match button.
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I feel like the campaign is all over the place to be a good practice environment. Some missions have you just microing units while some just hands you bases and units so you can get right into the fun part. It really isn't good practice. If you're talking specifically about "All In" or the final protoss mission...even those have its problems. They hand you units and/or free bases so there's nothing you have to worry about except spending your money. I guess this is fine "practice", but a ladder 1v1 achieves the same thing and more.
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I´d rather think of it the other way around.
Playing campaign on any difficulty won´t improve your 1v1 play by much - if any.
Playing 1v1 will however improve the ease of which you can run through the campaign.
When I first started playing, I played on a friends account to try it out and I finished brutal campaign with sheer stubburness and video tutorials, some of the mission did give me a hard time since I had never touched an RTS game previously.
Since then I bought my own game and laddered alot. I thought of finished the campaign once again on my own account but honestly it has now become so easy that the challenge bores me a bit and I only finished the first 6-7 missions.
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It's definitely counter-productive as far as 1v1 skill goes, Zatic nailed it so i wont echo it more
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I think you'll learn much faster just playing 1v1 or even team games than playing campaign brutal. Thing with campaign is that the flow/pace of the game has been set for you. There are no timings. Your unit compositions are predetermined. Your macro is limited by the limited resources that are provided you in campaign (most campaign missions will allow you 2 bases max).
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It depends how you approach it. Virtually every brutal level can be beaten by doing the following:
- Making sure you don't get supply blocked
- Expanding at appropriate times
- Constantly making SCVs
- Constantly making units
- Keeping your money low
If you approach the brutal campaign in this way then it could be beneficial for a low level layer as a way of practising mechanics (as a zerg player, my terran play got noticeably better as I went through the brutal campaign). But it won't be long before 1v1 games vs the AI in multiplayer games will provide a better practice environment.
Will playing brutal improve your terran mechanics? If your mechanics are bad at the moment, and you approach each level in the aforementioned way, yes. But there are better ways to practice if the goal is just to get better and you don't care for the kerrigan portrait.
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On March 14 2012 02:34 Hairy wrote:
It depends how you approach it. Virtually every brutal level can be beaten by doing the following:
- Making sure you don't get supply blocked
- Expanding at appropriate times
- Constantly making SCVs
- Constantly making units
- Keeping your money low
Alot of missions come with odd number of scvs to start with, have no or only a few expansions, the units and upgrades are different and even the number of free supply to start with varies greatly. It bears little resemblance to real games and you´d be much much better off just laddering or even playing customs or vs ai games.
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I found that after having spent a lot of time on the ladder and improving there, playing single-player on brutal was significantly easier after the fact. But definitely not the reverse.
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I found single player more like abusing certain strats (like in the final protoss mission wall-in with DT ja sniping incoming overseers), siege tanks are OP and so on  . Still fun i guess it doesn't hurt if you play micro intensive units.
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I'm a diamond toss and I can't beat the brutal campaign, so according to my ego campaign is a waste of time and makes you a bad person.
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On March 14 2012 02:15 zatic wrote:
Campaign is an absolute waste of time regarding your 1v1 skill. Not only will you not learn anything, more likely you'll develop bad habits and actually lower your skill.
Where do you think the tens of thousands of Kerrigan portraits in Bronze come from?
If anything, play 1v1 against the AI, which is actually good for practicing build timings, worker production, supply, etc. Or just man up and hit that Find Match button.
Instant call down supply depots...
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Definitely no, the single-player campaign is a waste of time with a bunch of "build this new unit, asshole" missions. Just play on ladder. It's better to play under a little pressure than quicksave-quickload, that's what teaches you to get better at the game.
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The campaign is a good way to learn the basics of the game if you're completely new, but I would highly advise against using it as a representation in any way for a 1v1 game. The basics of pretty much any mission in the campaign, even in brutal pretty much go like this:
Build scvs. Build supply depots. Build marines. A move to victory.
Not really helpful for any realistic situation.
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On March 14 2012 04:01 Xxazn4lyfe51xX wrote:
Build scvs. Build supply depots. Build marines. A move to victory.
Not really helpful for any realistic situation.
*cough* marine SCV allin *cough* :D
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sure, playing starcraft will get you better at it. whether it's the most efficient way to do it, i don't know.
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On March 14 2012 04:12 Hairy wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2012 04:01 Xxazn4lyfe51xX wrote:
Build scvs. Build supply depots. Build marines. A move to victory.
Not really helpful for any realistic situation. *cough* marine SCV allin *cough* :D
Xxazn4lyfe51xX was being sarcastic, can´t you smell the zerg imba-marine QQ xD
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I didn't know there are many Bronze leaguers with Kerrigan portraits ._o
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As some people hinted, a lot of the campaign levels can be beaten by doing suicide all-ins to kill one building. For the Supernova level, I remember massing banshees and then sending *everything*, scvs, buildings, what have you, straight at that building you have to kill.
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Starcraft Master could help a little in the micro area or even to introduce you to some mechanics you were not fully aware of, but what matters most for 1v1 is macro. I would have to say that the multitasking trainer has to be the best non multiplayer map which can help improve your game.
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You'd be wasting time. The campain is nothing like 1v1. If you use "practicing micro" to justify your arguement, there are better UMS maps out there to practice your micro with.
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Most campaign maps just have an AI that generates units to throw at your base defenses... so no. It's really quite different. I mean, if someone hasn't played the game at all, the campaign will familiarize them with the units, but it's not going to improve you past that.
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Honestly there is no avoiding practicing against real opponents. A lot of 1v1 skills comes from a good "game sense" or "feel" of game mechanics. In campaign, you have all these silly upgrades (which, though awesome, aren't in 1v1) which make you think certain units are more viable than they are. Generally it is only through experience that you will understand the strengths of each unit in each matchup.
The second issue as it has been raised plenty of times is the lack of the dimension of time. In 1v1s where timing is extremely crucial especially for races which rely heavily on timing pushes, it is essential to understand what is weak or strong or threatening at which point in time in the game.
As mentioned multiple times too, if you want to practice micro there are plenty of good micro-intensive platforms such as marine split challenge or even using the unit tester with a friend to test certain compositions and testing certain composition matchups (which is really fun too).
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On March 14 2012 02:15 zatic wrote:
Campaign is an absolute waste of time regarding your 1v1 skill. Not only will you not learn anything, more likely you'll develop bad habits and actually lower your skill.
Where do you think the tens of thousands of Kerrigan portraits in Bronze come from?
If anything, play 1v1 against the AI, which is actually good for practicing build timings, worker production, supply, etc. Or just man up and hit that Find Match button.
^^ I'm with that guy
MAYBE you could try to argue that it's like saying, "if you want to be good at basketball you don't just play a lot of basketball games, you have to practice dribbling, shooting, etc. individually". But even if you wanted to argue that... I'd say you're better off just playing a game really focusing hard on one certain thing (spending your money, scouting, etc.)
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campaign gives you units you can't use in multi, teaches you tactics that dont work in multi, forces you to fight enemy compositions you'll never find in multi
not a good idea to improve, play it for fun if you like but it aint no macro trainer
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On March 14 2012 02:15 zatic wrote:
Where do you think the tens of thousands of Kerrigan portraits in Bronze come from?
Most likely? Portrait farmers. They are a real plague down there in bronze.
I dont think there are any legitimate bronzies with 1000Z wins. (are there?)
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On March 15 2012 14:42 kaluro wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2012 02:15 zatic wrote:
Where do you think the tens of thousands of Kerrigan portraits in Bronze come from?
Most likely? Portrait farmers. They are a real plague down there in bronze. I dont think there are any legitimate bronzies with 1000Z wins. (are there?)
I don't think he means zergified Kerrigan, he means the human Kerrigan portrait you get for beating the brutal campaign. You guys are thinking for the wrong portrait. The 1k Zerg wins Kerrigan has nothing to do with the campaign, he was just pointing out that even bronze leaguers can beat the campaign on brutal.
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Campaign doesn't punish you for macro-mistakes, because the opponent is just this sort of AI that sits there waiting for you to attack him.
Campaign teaches you how to play campaign. Not multiplayer. It's good if you are below bronze, like never played RTS, and so you beat the campaign on hard, but that's it. It's just a big tutorial.
Multiplayer, on the other hand, has a lot of timings. Mirror match-up, who is producing more drones and then the big attack comes, or in any of the match-ups, how many workers and tech you can safely get before the opponent's big push, which you are scouting to see what it is.
If you are bronze/silver/gold, no offense, but you are really really low level. As in, I don't think gold people know how to fully play the game yet. Like you don't understand all the unit timings, or what is possible, or what your race is capable of. You just need to play the game more. it's an extremely complex game. I'm mid-masters and I don't understand shit still.
You just need to get over that ladder anxiety and just play. If you log 2,000 games, you'll be diamond. It's just a matter of how many games you play. The possibility that you might actually be good at this game only really comes into play after you've hit like high masters. Until then, everyone is just trying to play a ton of games to figure out what's going on.
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The first thing I did in starcraft 2 was clear brutal mode. That said i played brood war so I had some idea of what I was doing, but generally the campaign isn't too hard imo
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If you actually worked on your mechanics before playing campaign, then stuff like tapping and keeping track of upgrades, some multitasking can be exercised during the game. I can confirm this from personal experience. The effect could have been "amplified" by the fact that I play Zerg main (high-master) and Terran macro (but not general mechanics) is a little bit novel to me.
As far as the possibility of campaign being used as an alternative training method, I think zatic already made it clear; absolutely not.
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Your way better off just playing 1v1s. I've seen gold leaguers with brutal completed that don't know the first thing about the game.
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I did the campaign on brutal right when SC2 came out. And I had just played beta a bit then and was Bronze (now only Silver). So playing the campaign didn't really get my skill up. If at all you want to draw a connection here, it's probably easier to play the campaign on brutal when you've already learnt some 1v1 basics. But the other way around... nothing to learn imo.
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EPT
