[Broco]

Anyway, after the general praise of the story of schlock like Bioshock, I'm pleased with the fact that practically everybody seems to hate the writing in the SCII campaign (even IGN!). It's strangely heartening to realize that the level of taste among reviewers and "gamers" hasn't actually hit rock bottom. And hopefully the blowback will lead Blizzard to demote some folks, redraw the storyboards and get their act together for the next installments (slim hope, I know).

Though, even if the individual sentences in the script were fixed to no longer be cringe-inducing, just the basic concept of new adventures for old Starcraft heroes limits the level of quality the story can reach. Somebody like Kerrigan has already gone through a complete (and pretty cool I might add) character arc in the previous games, and there's really nowhere else to take the character that won't feel either like a travesty or rehash. And personally, I didn't even remember any of the characters' names, so I don't see why they insisted on reusing them -- especially given a game universe with so many different factions and minor characters. Modern Warfare had a better idea with its narrow, constantly shifting perspectives of grunt-level soldiers -- given Starcraft's focus on small tactical battles without overarching metagame strategy, this would've been a great fit for its story too.

[Kabbage]

And really, at least with the Terrans, it's the setting that's the meat and potatoes here, not so much the characters. I was hoping for something more vaguely realistically military, I suppose. Almost all of the cutscenes from the first Starcraft focused on the movements of the armies and various scenes from their wars. The purpose of the conflict was never really the focus, it felt, simply that there was an ever-present one and that this was the absurd world of excesses that had resulted.

[Pat the Great]

[Broco]

[Pat the Great]

[Ebrey]

[CubaLibre]

[Kabbage]

Clearly!

[skelethulu]

I've joined up with a friend for 2v2s. We're both going Zerg and focusing on maximum harass. One of us 6-pools while the other gasses up into mutas. End game usually just goes for faster expansion and ultras. I think we'll make it out there.

Played a few with a friend running humans. marine-marauder-medivac balls with zerglings (getting healed by the medivacs) are tough to deal with. People seem to be much worse at defense in 2v2s.
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[Broco]

[brckrd!]

I'm a few hours into the campaign, and I gotta agree that the writing is kinda ass so far. I'm going to reserve my full judgment until I finish the game, though.
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[Lymojo]

Well, shit, dabbling through the campaign was the only reason I was going to play this game. Thanks for saving me the money, guys.
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[Broco]

Well, we're only talking about the cutscenes and whatnot here. The actual campaign levels are well-paced, challenging and varied.

[ninjafetus]

Yeah, the levels are outstanding. The story and dialog is what's a bit generic. Although I do like (spoiler) how "Dr. Narud" is basically Samir Duran (backwards name, same facial hair) from the first game. It ties into the secret mission from Brood War and adds some context for why he would have knowledge of Xel Naga artifacts and be interested in removing Kerrigan as an enemy.

skelethulu> My friend and I have fun in 2v2 double zerging as well, and having one person mass mineral defense to protect both out FEs while giving all his gas to the other person for extra fast mutie flock. It doesn't work against good people, but it's pretty funny against lesser competition.

SPEAKING OF silly games, I find FFAs to be entertaining when I don't want to play serious multi. A lot of times you get matched up with three beginners who turtle up, leaving you the freedom to expo 2 or 3 times, build some air to keep them in their bases, and then do whatever the hell you want. I think I had a circle of 14 hatcheries in the middle of lost temple and 16 ultras all spinning in circles throughout the center a couple days ago. Then I made 87 overlords and flew them into a poor confused person's base and dropped creep everywhere. The next game I filled a person's main with 68 changelings. Why? Why not.

[tacotaskforce]

[Ebrey]

[Kabbage]

They've already set up the gist of the overall plot arc here with the Protoss missions, and it was Big Bads Try To End Universe. I'm sure there will be some subplots going on with Kerrigan and Mengsk and likely some Protoss clan in-fighting, but the crux of it is trying to prevent the new bad guys from destroying everything forever. I guarantee you this will not change.

[Ronnoc]

Man, what's with the hate? The human campaign in Warcraft III is probably the best Blizzard's made.

[Kappuru]

[another god]

Kap, you're cool and all, but you've totally just shitted on this thread with your "I'm better than you" crap.
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interdimensional

[Pat the Great]

hahahahaha.

yeah, gaming bravado doesn't really fit too well on SB.
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-pat m.
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[skelethulu]

Interestingly this has about the same effect on me as saying you are better at Dragon Quest.

[Kappuru]

Ok, this isn't about me being better than you, because honestly I'm not as good at SCII as I thought I'd be. I'm having trouble with mid to late game macro, this game is so more macro oriented than 1.

It's about 6pooling and zergling rushes being an outmoded strategy in this era of SCII, mainly due to the fact that workers can be pulled off the line and hold pretty well. once you've committed to the rush, you're now at a severe econ disadvantage. 2 marauders and 2 marines later and the game is over.

It's not a viable strategy.
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[Kappuru]

M-M-M is fairly easy to deal with mid-to late game if you've done your scouting and have a couple colossi - always remember as well that high templar can feedback medivacs for a 1-shot kill.

Edit : seriously guys, i'm sorry. not trying to come off as an internet-hero dbag here.
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[another god]

For those reasons I am not a fan of colossi and high templars.

I get what you're saying, though. There is a lot of cheese out there like 6pooling, and they are just decimated by the right counters.

The double zerg harass transition to 1 speedling army and 1 quick muta army sounds pretty interesting though. It's not the obvious cheese that you expect, and unless you have a Terran going hellions it's going to take a while for anyone to come up with an army to fight a bunch of zerglings out in the field. I kinda like the gas trade, but I think the interface is pretty chunky, so... Who knows if it's viable to pros? Does anyone even take 2v2s seriously?
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interdimensional

[Kappuru]

Well.. it's 2v2s. There aren't really going to be any 2v2s beyond showmatches I think. The strategy you describe is interesting, but it's so easy to repel the initial push and take out one of the players with early banshees that I can't see this being very viable.

Pro/high level play is so weird and different though. I was recently in a tournament at a lan center in ktown, (4th place :/) and the experience was SO much different than playing on bnet.
I'm not saying they're pro level, but most of the players were high level and never really had to worry about 6/pool or reaper harass, i saw those strategies get shut down HARD in the round robin stage and it was pretty interesting to see everyone kind of take notice and go towards more advanced harass/timing push style of play.
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[ninjafetus]

Update: Starcraft 2 is still fun.

[Broco]

I had two of my funnest games so far tonight. The first was a satisfying 25min TvT Blistering Sands matchup where I basically dominated on all fronts, even though my opponent was relatively strong by practice league standards. Early on I wiped out half his workers with a reaper rush -- even though he already had 4 marauders, they were at the choke point and very slow to respond. I think he had a lot of trouble recovering from that, I noticed he was very late to expand to his natural later. Then I gradually encroached on his base with marauder/tank/viking mix, basically taking my time advancing a couple of tanks at a time and waiting for reinforcements when weakened, first cutting off his expansion and gradually wiping out his army.

The second was a 50min metalopolis TvP. My opponent was weak, all he did was mass Stalkers, he played very defensively and I had much better macro and map control, but I still lost because I had no idea what the counter to Stalkers was. Reading up on them now, I now see I should've cranked out marauders instead of sending all those 50-marine/8 tank armies to be butchered (my simplistic understanding was that marines were good against protoss :) and I most likely would've won. I destroyed two of his expansions out of 4 before they were very developed but he let me take 5. I was overaggressive, kept getting wiped out and there were multiple times when he could've taken his massed stalkers and walked right over my base, but he didn't due to cowardliness and lack of scouting. Near the end, I launched about 8 nukes at his massed army -- again one would have been enough to win, I think he was out of resources while I had 10000/5000 with 200 units -- but I was too predictable with my aim and he kept dodging them. I think the nukes spooked him into eventually actually coming over and destroying my base. I tried to insta-rebuild a whole new base with all my accumulated resources, but before I had an army he came over and destroyed that one too :(. I don't agree with you guys's claims that knowing the counters doesn't matter that much.

EDIT: Also duh should've used EMP with all those ghosts.

[Pat the Great]

I've been on a roll (plat) with early Terran aggression--Marine/Hellion opening in TvT -> Marauder/Thor, Morrow's 5 Rax Reaper opening against Zerg, and Marine/Ghost against Toss. No tanks/vikings here, no sir.
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-pat m.
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[Pat the Great]

Also, just got a new laptop! No more minimum settings wooooooo.
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-pat m.
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[ninjafetus]

Broco> Counters do matter, but it sounds like you had the game won and just lost it doe to lack of macro. If you have a lot of extra money, just make extra production buildings and be constantly pumping out troops. If you're winning enough in economy, you can just keep killing each other's army and you'll eventually come out ahead due to their lack of resources or comparative production rate.

Pat> I haven't run into anyone doing the 5 rax reaper against my Z yet. I'm not looking forward to it :p

ANYONE> I'm finally getting a feel for the timings of Zerg. I've been slumping since I switched to them, but I'm starting to pick back up again. Just losing a few times to stupid things (overlord snipes, droning a bit too hard, etc) really helps to clean up the bigger mistakes in my game. Now I feel like I'm getting just enough troops out to stop the pushes and save my expo, but not so much that my econ sucks. It's also working the other way, where I can see counter openings, and punish them for being greedy. It feels good. I never realized how spoiled I was with all the safe openings T has. ^^;

[Broco]

[another god]

Hey ninjafetus, next time we play I'll be T and run a 5rax reaper v your Z. That sounds dirty, but I guess all Starcraft kind of is.
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interdimensional

[ninjafetus]

[another god]

5 minutes to get 200 supply is a lot. Most games only take 25 minutes. Think about how long it takes to take down one building w/ maxed out units.
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interdimensional

[brckrd!]

So there I was doing my ranking matches when I get paired up against a Protoss player. I start off with "glhf" and he responds with "thanks baby girl". At this point I knew I was in for a treat.
I'm doing a normal 12 pool build and send a drone over to scout. I see a really early (as in before a gateway) forge already completed and a cannon going up so I'm thinking he's going to cannon rush or something. Anyway, I expand and then tech up to Hydralisk. I pump a few out and get the range upgrade when he says "GG". I suck at Starcraft 2 so I'm thinking "Oh shit, he must have outmacro'd the hell out of me and has a mothership rush coming!" So I send an overseer to scout out what his ace in the hole is.
Three void rays.
Against my 9 hydralisks with range and damage upgrade.

What follows is about 10 minutes of him sending 4-5 void rays at a time against my swarm of hydralisks. He then spends the next 15 minutes begging me to surrender so he can rank up and "stop playing newbs in bronze", all the while absolutely filling his base with cannons. So I tech up to Broodlords and start sniping his cannons and pylons all the while responding with "nty" to his pleas.

In his death throes, he pauses the game and says he's going to smoke. Having destroyed everything but his forge, I take this chance to make a cup of coffee and open my arcade stick parts that came in the mail. About 15 minutes later, I am ready to go ahead and finish the game up and unpause it. He immediately pauses again (which means one of two things; he was lying about smoking and has just sat there vigilantly, waiting those 15 minutes until I finally decide to unpause... or he smokes inside which can't be too good for the smell of his furnishings). This repeats until he runs out of pauses (he has three) and then he finally surrenders. Watching the replay back, I could have won of a multitude of occasions if I only had scouted a bit more. Or sent my roach army against his few cannons. Lesson learned.
53 minute game.

In short: what the fuck did I just sit through
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[another god]

lol, man, i am happy i'm not in bronze. when you have a lot of shit it's pretty worth your while to be aggressive with scouting. sending in 6 roaches to see what's up in his base (cannons) helps you out a lot. hell, take 6 zerglings and split them up over the map. that's 150min for total map awareness.
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[ninjafetus]

Ranking matches are hilarious. My first ranking match I built my depot and rax like normal (was playing T at the time) and, having not seen his drone scout, I sent that marine to go check out his base. With his initial 6 drones, he had made two extractors (no drones on them) and one evolution chamber. He had not made any extra drones yet. I actually felt kind of bad as my marine shot his last 3 drones to death. They just kept mining. He quit after his drones died. Oh well.

[brckrd!]

Thanks for the advice. I really need all that I can get.
I only know what I read on liquipedia... which isn't that much. I think my biggest problems is lack of aggression. I'm completely clueless when it comes to knowing when to attack, but I guess that's where more effective scouting will come in.

I do excel at wrecking bad Terran players with baneling busts, though.
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[another god]

We should get more SB SC games in, guys. Me and ninjafetus played, and it was awesome.
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interdimensional

[Kappuru]

I'm down to play sometime!
I really need to play a couple more ladder games to get back into diamond, though..


PS:

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