Another Run From the Bottom

This season I’m trying to make another run from bronze and up. I still have no clue as to how a Zerg beats a good Protoss, but right now I am trying to side step that problem by working my way up and learning from the experience.

Getting my alternate account to bronze was not a problem, but I probably should have settled on silver instead. For now I have played and won about 75 games in bronze and still not really started to meet any silver players. I kinda think that the system is punishing me for intentionally getting into bronze.

In fact I think my behavior is wrong and that Blizzard should do something to prevent yoyo-ladder players. Players that one day is in a high league, then has an amazingly long losing streak followed by an equally long winning streak.

Another phenomenon I think is messing up the ladder are the portrait hunters. People in bronze that have 3000 wins and no game longer than 5 minutes. They are clearly either win-trading or something similar. I hate to think about what this does to the gaming experience of someone who really is bronze level.

Great Balls of Fire

My gameplay versus Protoss has progressed to a completely unbearable state. For a while in gold I won approximately 80% of my ZvP games and when I got promoted to Platinum that only dropped slightly. But then I started meeting Protoss player with a seemingly unbeatable strategy: They do _nothing_!

At first I thought my problem was I was too passive and let them probe up too much so I set out to improve my harrasment. It works fine, but make no difference.

Right now most of my games goes something like this: I get 3 bases to their two. I get a nice ball of mutalisks and kill about 20 probes in one of the two bases before they get too many stalkers. Mean while I max out on 200/200 mostly roaches and save up around 5k in minerals and gas. When they move out they usually mostly have stalkers and we meet and my army dies to their limited loses and I max out again. My next wave of units dies for little more return than the first time around. So does my third max-out and then I am out of money and unable to hold back their attack anymore.

I’m a little baffled by this. I’m quite often ahead on upgrades as well and going ultras or broodlords seems to have no positive effect. The feeling I have is that I am way ahead before the first engagement, but when we meet we exchange units at the rate 120 to 30 or so.

I’ve been told I should have 5 bases and even more money. I don’t see the wisdom in that. 2 more bases (as opposed to just two more hatcheries) would either spread my drones thinner or leave less supply for army units. And even if it didn’t and just gave me more money, then I don’t see the point in being able to max out 5 times before dying compared to just 3.

I assume there is some trick I need to discover as pros are not quite this lost to the great Protoss deathball. I just wonder what the hell it is.

The Ladder Lock-Down Makes no Sense!

I cheated the system and deserve no pity. I know that, so that is not my point of this posting. But the recent ladder lock-down makes no sense and I am amazed that Blizzard insists of the madness that we have today. I realize that they are trying to limit competition to small closed systems so move people can have achievable goals, but it would be nice if they made sense to. Removing loses from statistics is just another way of obscuring the problems rather than fixing them.

So I am in gold and heading up. That I got here by losing a lot on purpose is besides the point. I could have been a valid gold level player who recently improved a lot. Assume that I am.

I am about 1500 points away from the top spot in my division and I have a little more than a week to get there in competition with all those ranked about me. That is fine. Normally I would get the first spot as I would be promoted before that. That is fine, but it isn’t like that anymore. Due to the lock-down I am competing with those in my division. I’m clearly the better player ‘cause I am playing platinum and diamond players and winning about half of those games.

Number one in my league is also winning about half his games, but he is just playing gold-level players. Assuming we both mass games from now until season’s end, he will still by ranked above me simply because his opponents are easier than mine. Out wins will give us the same number of points since we have both reached our level – I just haven’t been promoted yet! Result is that the season will end with wildly inaccurate top 10’s in all but master league.

What is the point of that?

Two Protoss vs Protoss games

I’ve played two PvPs today as well as a range of other games. But those two games exemplifies some of the problems I am having. Probably problems everyone trying to improve at Starcraft I having.

In the first game I put on early pre assure, he blocked his ramp with force fields and captured some of my units and killed them. I killed some of his as well. A fairly even exchange. We then both expanded twice and the game turned into a heavy macro fest. I tried to attack his 3rd base and had significantly more collosi than him, but he had a couple of void rays. I lost that exchange by a tiny margin, but in the next major battle he had 4 or 5 void rays and my lead in collosi was completely nullifed by that. I ended up losing the game like that.

Im not so impressed with patch 1.2s upgrade of the void ray. Yeah it hit collosi harder now, but it is slow as hell and there will always be stalkers around too and they die quite fast. That is my take on it anyways.

On to game two. Early game was pretty much as before, except this time I went stargate instead my second robotics. I got out fewer collosi and a couple of void rays and was ready for the first engagement. We met and the exchange was fairly even. Hard to say who won or lost there. He was clearly pumping out collosi from more robotics facilities than me, but on the other hand my force of void rays were growing fast now. We finally met in one big battle and my void rays died fast after which his superior number of collosi wiped me out.

Wtf! And I repeat: WTF!?! What lesson regarding the relative value of a pure collosi build versus one where void rays are mixed in should I learn here? I’m baffled. Sure I may have lost du e to bad unit control or due to me just sucking in general, but I was clearly ahead in the early game and my macro was clearly better than both my opponents. How come I lost both the games then?

Knowing what to learn from a given defeat is hard. Way harder than actually playing the game. And it makes me frustrated and very much aware of my suckiness. Bah….!

Going Against the Trend

I know PvZ is considered slightly in Protoss favor at the moment. That is not what I experience. I’ve lost 9 of my last 15 games – the majority of those against Zergs. In my frustration I have probably been a little on a tilt too. Not a pretty thing.

I think that the main reason for my loses is an overall shift in the meta game. And that I feel that I am behind on the learning curve here. A couple of months back it was all about mutalisks and using the mobility of Zerg vs Protoss. That has caused me to go light on zealots which now has become a problem when mass zerglings into roaches seems to be the new standard opening.

I suck at this game and often feel that I mis-click more than I should. Or mis-judge the situation when in hindsight it was obvious what I should have done. That becomes frustrating after 6-7 loses in a row. And everything just builds on top of that.

Now I am simply dreading playing versus Zerg and at the same time I find Protoss vs Protoss a really complicated and scary matchup. I’m considering a race-switch, but I also know it is a huge change and that there is a lot I would have to re-learn. I wish I didn’t suck so much at this.

PvP Adventures

Okay so this is one match-up I do not understand. Yesterday I lost to a guy who build a pylon right next to my nexus and then continued with a gateway. I killed his pylon with probes and yet he just built a new one!

I realize that I should have just built my own gateway. It would have been done before his and the won, but I panicked and used too many of my probes.

Today I had another amazing PvP on lost temple. A guy went fast blink stalkers and kept me in my base for far too long. In the end I won, but mainly because he entered in a few battles he shouldn’t. And the annoying thing is that only after the game was over, did I realize that the only reason he could blink up in my base, must have been because he had an observer there. An observer I should have been able to kill.

Expanding in PvP is something I never seem able to punish other players for doing and something that is suicide if I try it myself. It seems imba, but I guess it can’t be.

I wish it wasn’t about the clicking

If you read any Starcraft II site you’ll find this argument. That Starcraft II is a bad game since it is all about the speed and not about strategy. Even on teamliquid.net the hordes of new-comers to the scene will reason like this.

They will say: “It is so unfair that my opponent won. At this point in the game he had so many units simply because he clicked on stuff faster than me. I should have won, since I was better at strategy than him”.

One some level I follow this line of reasoning. Back in the early days of the original Starcraft I was a huge fan of the faster rather than fastest speed setting. I would argue that no one could execute good strategy at the fastest speed setting and the game became poorer due to the too fast speed. I know better now, but there is an important distinction. I didn’t claim that I lost to an inferior  e strategy due to my lack of speed. I claimed that the game became poorer overall. I still sucked back then though!

In the first example the complaining n00b reveals that he does not understand what strategy is. First of all: His opponent is probably not a whole lot faster due to having a set strategy from the start. He who complained had not. Also his opponent had a strategy optimized for getting more units at certain time and the complaining player was looking to overcome that with “tricks”. I.e. doing something sneaky.

The problem with sneaky play is, that they assume that your opponent is bad! He may be, but it is simply not a solid strategy rely on it.  I may suck at the game, but I know better than to complain about the game for lacking strategy. Doing so, would only reveal my own lack of understanding for what strategy is.

My Account is Locked

So I am in Delhi and like the noob I am, I started up Starcraft II and tried to login. Result: Now my account is logged due to suspicious activity. I guess playing Starcraft II from India was a bad idea.

I hope I can have it unlocked once I get back to my own Country.

So Many Protoss

If you can consistently beat Protoss, then I think you are in a good shape for taking the top spot on the ladder. There are so many Protoss’ out there. In fact I just finally ended a PvP streak of 8 by meeting a Terran. That felt so wrong somehow. It is like Starcraft II is just for Protoss and no other faction at all!

I like to play Protoss too, but I don’t like that all games are mirror match-ups and I don’t do particularly well in this match-up either.

Currently I find Protoss vs Zerg the most fun match-up. Maybe because Zerg is a little under powered here, but I prefer to think that it is because the matches tends to be drawn out macro games more. That I like.

50%

This is a comment on the new match making system of Starcraft II. In some ways it is better than what I hoped and in some ways very disappointing.

The good stuff is that it actually does a decent job of protecting players against being smurfed to heavily. The curse of better players either resetting their rank (iccup) just to get series of easy wins, has been efficiently countered by the new Automated Match-Making.

On to the not so good stuff. The stated goal of the AMM is to ensure that players (more or less) always plays people of a similar skill level. This should lead to a win rate for most players around 50%. I think the 50% goal is reached, but the similar skill level is more questionable.

To me it seems that you are never in a situation where you play someone and think: I really think this game can go either way. Either it feels overwhelmingly unfair for you or for your opponent. And it seems to be a streak of games too. For instance you win a game easily and go on to another which you also win easily. At some point you encounter an opponent that is vastly better than you and from experience I can now tell, that the next 5-6 opponents will be of similar caliber too.

I want close games every games. Not a long win streak followed by a long streak of loses.

The Battle.net 2.0 Discussion

I’ve been following the bnet 2.0 discussion too. I think what got it started was the teamliquid article, which again referred to incgamers.com. As can be expected the discussion quickly became an all out flamewar. That is always fun, but I don’t really feel like I want to join in.

I just saw that Gosugamers.net had a way more balanced approach in their posting on the same subject. I think that my own position is more along those lines.

I am a software developer myself. I work on an application which delivers time critical data across the globe and I think I know a little about the challenges that you face when doing that. I also think I know something about the process you go through when you design a piece of software.

First of all: It is all about tradeoffs. I’m sure that on the list of priorities for the designers of Starcraft 2, then it looks something like this:

1. Make a cool and fun game.
2. Make it really hard to cheat.
3. Ensure that games are smooth and free of lag.

While 1) can be achieved in isolation the two other items carries serious tradeoffs. For instance they have decided to route all net traffic through the servers rather than having it peer-to-peer like in Starcraft 1. This makes it easier for them to inspect the traffic and prevent tampering of data, but it also increases the potential latency by a factor of – at least – two! To counter that they probably gave up on having cross continent game play.

Just to give some numbers: The latency from Denmark to Asia is on the order of 2-300 ms. If you take a country like Singapore, that has a firewall around the entire country, that can easily add another 100ms. It varies from day to day, but imagine the worst case scenario you would have a 400 ms time of a message being send from Denmark to Singapore and back. That is obviously way too much for competitive play (and seriously annoying for casual as well).

The above considerations makes it understandable that they do not have cross realm play as a high priority, but still leaves me baffled as to why they would have not chat channels. I assume they expect a ton of players, so if the “new” chat channels were just a naive Starcraft 1-like implementation you’d probably end up in chat rooms like “Wings of Liberty US-196372”. That obviously builds no community.

We, who come from smaller countries, are in a different situation. Back in the days it was rare that there were more than 100 Danes online so we fit into about 4 chatrooms. It might be 10 to 15 when Starcraft 2 comes out. That is still small enough to give a sense of community. So I really want chat rooms back.

EU is Down

No not financially like the New York Times writes, but much, much worse: the Battle.net server for EU is down :-(.

I really wanted to write about the horrible content of Patch 13. Protoss needed a buff and – as usual – got a nerf. I wanted to actually play the game. I wanted to know when I could start practicing my Terran gameplay, but no. Battle.net was down from late Thursday until this morning. Then it has been unstable as hell ever since.

I even managed to get in Silver in 3v3. 2 wins, 5 disconnects of which 3 counted as loss. People who managed to qualify for a league at all, must have ended up in totally random leagues. N00bs can get in Diamond League due to their opponents disconnecting and competent players end up in Silver or Bronze.

But while they are trying to fix this, they could consider some of the absolutely necessary thing they still have to fix in the game:

• Terrans needs to be nerfed compared to Protoss. Not like the (small) buff they just got.
• It needs to be made clearer where you are placed on the global ladder. Not obfuscated even more like Patch 13 did.
• The friend-invite is right now horribly broken. I do not have a facebook account, nor do I want one. Sigh.
• Chat channels. Give them back to us, kthnx bai.
• Let a party online watch a replay. Make this a priority please!

I feel more and more concerned with the direction Blizzard is taking battle.net. I hope something happens soon to restore my faith in them. All I really wanted was Brood War updated and available on iccup.

Patches

I’m a little bit in shock over patch 12. Not that I have tried it yet, but I don’t really want to either. Maybe there is something of which I am not aware? Roaches were no longer a problem as far as I know and Protoss have serious problems with how late they get their technology enabling buildings.

Twilight Council, Dark Shrine and the Forge seriously needs to cost less and in some cases take shorter time to build. And yet the patch went the other direction! And while the roach used to be silly, the armor nerf was just fine. They just need to fix the marauder and reaper too!

I think what I like least about Starcraft II is the marauder for its concussive shell upgrade. A passive slow destroys game play as it makes it impossible to disengage in a battle. I know Terrans feel that the force field is insane too, but at least it is not a passive ability.

Slow feels like something belonging in Warcraft III, and even there they had the wand of negation to cancel it out (at least in Reign of Chaos).

Lost Confidence

I play a lot of 2v2s with a guy I know as Sklent. That is fine even though I think our cooperation is less than stellar. The games are still fun especially when we are winning.  Rarely do we play 1v1 against each other as it is subtly understood that I would win easy. That misunderstanding was corrected yesterday.

In a series of two games he took me down so badly that it wasn’t even funny. After the games I have been reflecting on why I lost.

One thing is that his Terrans are easily the race that gives me the most trouble, but I doubt that is the whole explanation. Maybe part of it is, that what set me apart from him in Brood War was my superior macro. Due to the way Starcraft II is different from Starcraft: Brood War, I don’t think I get the same out of that advantage :-(.

But I lost a whole series of games to Terrans that day. Either I didn’t get Collosi out in time, in which case Terran infantry tears up a Protoss ground army, or I got them out and then he had like 6+ vikings and it didn’t matter. I’m starting to lose faith in my ability to deal with Terrans in general.

Oh and last, but not least. When a terran lifts his command center on Metalopolis he will land at the high yield expansion when I am at 8 probes. Then he will mine with 5 SCVs at double the income to my 8. I find it absolutely crazy that a Terran can pull off a stunt like that and be ahead right away. And it only gets worse over time.

Outage

The Europe Battle.net has been pretty screwed for the last week and a half. 2v2 teams are randomly reset or is made to redo placement matches even though the team is still ranked! My 1v1 ranking disappeared after a while. Yesterday instead of a patch, I just became completely locked out.

Now I am reading about patch 9 on the US servers while waiting for something to fix my account. At first I thought they were insane. In patch 8 Protoss really needs a boost against Terrans (primarily due to the f*cked up crazy Reaper). Instead they buffed the Marauder and nerfed the Immortal. Sigh!

Due to the aforementioned issue I was already considering switching to Zerg for awhile. Judging by the feedback from the US servers this seems to be a good idea. The new larva bug, should make this extremely entertaining – for about 2 minutes at least :-(.

Leaving for Warmer Countries

In a couple of hours I will be leaving this cold country and the Starcraft 2 Beta (that I didn’t get into) for Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. I’ll be back in a month but hopefully get time to comment on that “thing” from different internet cafés wherever I go.

It seems like everybody else got in. AiurAdun got in thanks to some shady dealings. I hope this will make him update his gaming blog a bit. A ton of n00bs at DailyRush got in too. It really doesn’t seem fair when you have dedicated as much time to this game as I have.

Hopefully I will get a key and a second chance when I come back.

Until then I will enjoy the warmer climate of South-East Asia and Starcraft 2 at a distance.

Starcraft II Beta Impressions

I have of course been following the beta. I got lucky this time around. No beta key in the first wave means that I don’t have to test an unfinished game. I find way too many bugs in far more exiting financial applications as my day job, so I sure got lucky here.

(Well, yeah this line of reasoning does not work for me either. I just had to try).
So far I am pretty underwhelmed by what I have seen of the beta. I clearly remember getting Starcraft in April 1998 and upon starting it realizing that “it really didn’t look that great”. And Neither does Starcraft II in 2010.
This is a disappointment to me, but hopefully the game will be so great that we can ignore that it isn’t the prettiest it could be.
In game the units seems fragile when you look at them. Like stick men. Annoying when compared to the first games more solid and robust units. Everything also seems to take up less space and bases mine out faster. Will we ever see a Protoss base in Starcraft II with 15 gateways? Now there is definitely room for them in all bases.
Take a look the top screenshot. This is from a 2v2 where two allies are advancing together. Hard to see when the colors are so much the same. The second screenshot is showing how a red Terran almost look the same as the purple Zerg and the creep.
I’m sad that the original much brighter color-scheme of Starcraft II was ditched in favor of this.

Cut the Crap

So the comments to the previous posting were hilarious and all, but this is my blog and not the site where people go to flame each other (and more importantly me). In the future I will delete comments I find annoying.

So what do I think is okay?

1. Comments that directly and in a respectful manner deals with the topic of the posting.
2. It’s okay to hijack a comment thread with one comment to introduce yourself (if you are a new reader or old lurker).
3. If you engage in a conversation that is already approved (i.e. have not been deleted by me), that is also okay.

When offering advice – which is something I do appreciate – try to do so where relevant and in a useful fashion. This basically rules out most of Babytoss’s reviews of my old games. Also, try to notice the date of the posting you are commenting on: I have improved dramatically compared to back when I started this blog.

Celebrating defeat

Sometimes I feel that I suck more than others. Like lately I have lost a lot. I think I was like 24-22 on iccup and now I am 25-34. Sigh.

Some of it I can blame on encountering multiple 270 APM players with a record like 13-1, but most of it is just me not being good enough. Last season I mostly played against Terrans and developed a certain comfort in this match-up.

Against Terrans:
I almost always go 10/15 gate timing it so that I have dark templars out right after my 3rd or 5th dragoon. I don’t always know why I go with one over the other. I rarely win outright with the dragoons, but sometimes the dark templars will give me a free win. Recently I have started going straight for arbiters on just two bases. So far with decent results (I still lose, but hey… it is because I am bad).

Against Zerg:
I usually do a fast expand. I’ve learned that you need to cut probes around 15 supply to get enough canons and tech up in time. I havn’t been doing too great against zerg so far, but I mainly think I have issues of timing my build correctly. If I can secure my 3rd base and make it to the late game I win.

Against Protoss:
I used to two gate into robotics facility a lot, but I simply love the easy victory a 4-gate build sometimes gives me. Unfortunately that build tends to hand me some stupid loses too. Like when my opponent decides to do a 2 gate zealot opening and is very aggressive.

All these openings works great on Neo Medusa, which is map-of-the-week this week. It should offer me some opportunities. So far it has mostly given me loses :-)

TV to make a Nerd Happy

So I was totally geeking out last weekend. I had hooked my laptop up to the TV and was watching TSL live (or as live as it was). Nerd heaven!

The games were reasonably good and will probably only get better as the tournament goes on. And I like the commentators, even if I don’t quite agree on everything they say.

I may suck at the game, but it is absolutely not true that the level shown here is anywhere near the level in Korea. It may be more unpredictable due to less uniformity in strategy and nerves of people not used to playing in tournaments, but you rarely see Koreans completely screw up like we sometimes see among foreigners.

All in all the entertainment was still great. I only wish I some of my friends appreciated Starcraft enough for me to invite them over for Starcraft-on-TV and a beer. Alas Starcraft is still a minor thing here.