Starcraft 2 thoughts

[[ES] Mindflayer]

The good - pretty graphics. Battle.net integrations means my WoW friends can chat with me when in SC2 and vice versa (a feature, I might add, I pitched to AOL to talk to Blizzard about years ago....)

The bad - it's the same game. The vaunted multi-tier levels designed to stop tank zergs and so forth? Now it's just air zergs. Weird stuff in mulitplayer - played with one of the WoW guys last night. In two games, we saw someone start with 2x the resource collection of us. Watched the replays - they did not do anything we didn't, except suddenly pop Battlecruisers when the other three players were still building Barracks or Gateways. One guy had five Hatcheries at the 7 minute mark.

[[ES] RandomHero]

As Protoss I can build pretty damn fast.  The new crono ability on the Nexus is amazing, may even be over powered.  When using it on the nexus it'self you actually gather a little faster so I use it every time it's up and keep building probes indefinitely.  When you have multiple Nexus you can build an army very fast and upgrade them at the same time very quickly.  About the only thing it can't do is allow you to build buildings faster.

As for Zerg, I'll have to play them a little more to see how they're so fast.  I've seen Terran players swarm with me two squads of Reapers within 5 minutes of game start.  Both Terran and Zerg rushes can mostly be defeated if you use all of your probes, which deal more damage now and can take a little more too.  I'll be playing with both of them tonight I think.

I agree and disagree with Pat.

It IS the same game, all of my SC1 strategies work (with minor modifications).  People still act exactly the same, same attitudes, same cheap rushing (which takes away the point of playing the game IMO), barricading in with Supply Depots (which doesn't work as well cause we can scale cliffs now), etc.  Game balance is still much the same, they've done a pretty damn good job of making sure every unit/race has it's counter.  Also the unit limit is the same.

But at the same time it is NOT the same game, it's designed to be faster.  It's designed so that battles are more drawn out, "strategies" like building 50 million Carriers or 100 million Hyrdalisk do not work late in the game at all anymore, you can actually recover from the brink quickly (not easily though).  I haven't actually hit the unit limit yet in any game I've played.

Other notes.

The reveal is broken. Well not completely broken.  The idea is awesome, and it's worked nicely sometimes (especially against AI players).  Other times it reveals you way too soon.  And also it unreveals you which is nice, but completely pointless because everyone already knows where you are at that point and they're on their way to kill you.

Adding friends in the Battle.net integration doesn't always work when done by email.  My friends and I have been adding by character name and code (see other thread).

Graphics are amazing.  I've got everything cranked to Ultra.  Being able to zoom down to the battle is sweet, reminds me of the Warhammer RTS games.  Speaking of Warhammer, I wish Blizzard had made the bodies persistent like in Warhammer, that would be awesome.

[[ES] Mindflayer]

Graphics are pretty. As with most Blizzard games, it looks different on a Mac - richer, deeper colors.

No idea with the building. I just think I've gotten some suspect players. Twitter feed says a patch is coming to fix some 'Battlenet issues'. I'm guessing that is "to fix exploits".

[[ES] RandomHero]

More thoughts after playing for a few more days.

Playing singleplayer does NOT prepare you for multiplayer at all.  They are like two different games.  There are large differences in units, buildings, and upgrades.  Strategies that work in singleplayer will most likely not work in multiplayer and vice-versa.

Protoss:

High Templar are much much much more powerful than in SC1.  The Psi Storm ability is obnoxious and is capable of taking out large groups of infantry and even lightly armored vehicles in one or two shots.  I have finally hit the unit limit in one or two games, but the game is usually over far before I hit it.  Void Rays are nasty air units and a small group is capable of wiping a base off the map quickly.  Dark Templar are not as effective early in the game as they used to be because there are more mobile detection units available lower in the tech trees now across all three races.

Terran:

It is very easy to hit the unit limit as Terran when building defenses because Siege Tanks are quicker to get and faster to build now.  You must be careful not to build and fill out too many bunkers.  Upgrades are key, you can't get away with building large numbers of Marines and expect to be effective.

Zerg:

Zerglings are far weaker than they used to be, even in large groups they don't appear to be as effective as in SC1.  Roaches are the "new zergling".  Zerg is very easy to swarm with medium powered units because the tech tree is basically flat now.  All of your major units can be attained within 3-5 minutes of game start.  Basically, Zerg is still the rusher's best race by far.  Tip: If you run into the unit limit early on in the game, build a cheap building.  This will free up a unit immediately without having to wait for an overlord.  Of course you should build the overload in the meantime as well. Another Tip: When you have multiple Hatcheries, group them onto a shortcut key like "0" and set their rally points to the same spot.  Pressing "0" and then "S" will select all larva from all hatcheries where you can then build large numbers of units quickly and simply.  Using this trick as Zerg, you can raise a large army of mixed units in a minute or two and crush your opponents.

General:

Resource collection is a joke.  The key to a strong economy is to never stop building gatherers....  However, expanding to secondary bases is much harder because of the availability of cheap and effective units the enemy has available to stop you.

Some things never change.  Protoss is still the most powerful race by far.  Terran is still defense oriented.  And Zerg is still swarm centered (numbers numbers numbers).

EDIT:

I've got the basic build order down for all three races at this point.  Perhaps I'll post some of it if people are interested.

[[ES] Semicidal]

I have hit a wall. I am not winning any more matches. I cant figure out hard counters, cant seem to adapt (i usually start marines and marauders), and just seem to be missing something.

[[ES] Semicidal]

So I have exhausted my bonus pool and fought my way to rank 12 in my division (silver). I wish I knew how to get to gold.

[[ES] RandomHero]

Every fucking Terran player does the same exact fucking thing in 1v1.  Box themselves in with supply depots, build two siege tanks and a handful of marines... Then build a few banshees and proceed to try and kill the other player's base.

I've seen this done so many fucking times that I laugh and kill these guys indiscriminately.  Just played a game against a guy who did it, and I proceeded to kill his banshees before they could do any damage and just roflstomped his fucking base into the ground with upgraded marines...he wined, called bullshit, and left.

[[ES] RandomHero]

Oh Semi, sorry about yesterday, I lost power and didn't get it back until about an hour ago.

[[ES] RandomHero]

Figured out how to get promoted to the next league up.  You gotta win ALOT.  I just won 6 in a row and 9 total and I got promoted to Silver 1v1 league.

[[ES] Semicidal]

Team liquid has a decent explanation on their site.
The matchmaking system needs to be sure that you can HANDLE being in that league before they will promote you. Every time you win a game, they try to match you with someone a little stronger next time. When you are winning consistently against people in the mid range of the next league up they should promote you. That said I was against 5th-10th gold players and no promo yet.

Its like a slow burn of what the placement matches are designed to do. When you win or lose placement matches, they heavily increase or decrease your next opponents toughness.

[[ES] Semicidal]

http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=118212


Also...
World rank
Silver-small #11,703 (10.23% of 129,205, 90th percentile)
Region rank
Silver-small #4,330 (9.69% of 50,453, 90th percentile)
Stats    34 won, 26 lost, ratio of 56.67%

Woooooot

[[ES] Semicidal]

Wow, not only was I promoted to gold, I start rank1 in my division...Kind of redundant but hey.

[[ES] RandomHero]

Twice now I've killed someone with just SCVs.... Why am I still SILVER!?

[[ES] RandomHero]

I'm going to start a thread for replays I think, soon as I get to making them into videos.  Some of my replays are just HILARIOUS.  I'm unorthodox to say the least...