This season the gods of Starcraft (otherwise known as the MMR) saw fit to place me in Bronze league whereupon I cursed the gods, there was wailing and gnashing of teeth and I’m fairly certain I deafened some of my friends on Skype. Sorry guys. What happened was this; my placement match was against a Bronze person who tried to cannon rush and then go for the void rays (always with that sequence of events!) and I eventually won. And was placed rank 70-something in Bronze. Fury descended upon my soul as a host of swarming harpies, screeching their discontent to the sky.
Better stop with the florid hyperbole before I hurt myself.
It actually turned out to be a good thing for me to spend some more time in Bronze league. Up until recently I have had what I refer to as “The Other Shoe Syndrome”. I would have no anxiety at all starting up a game, but the minute I started winning my hands would shake and I would be convinced that I was about to get destroyed. That doesn't happen much anymore, and it’s partly because being in Bronze was actually kind of relaxing. The games weren't as frantically paced and it gave me some time to get in the habit of researching upgrades more and keeping my production up. I can tell my game is better than it was a few weeks ago, and there is even a chance I might break into Gold soon.
In fact, I have to break into Gold league because I promised hysterics on Twitter and the game logged in to express its anticipation. What? You say there’s just another human on the other end who’s job it is to monitor the Twitters and respond to fans? Nonsense! LIES. Tassadar himself sent me that Tweet and nothing less than awesome carryings-on will suffice. In other words, it is my solemn duty to humiliate myself on the Internet to appease the Starcraft gods with a video of me trying to do an aerial while screaming my bloody head off. Claude the baneling will probably be involved.
Alright, before I roll completely off the precipice of crazy, here are some things that have really been helping my game lately. Excellent, an excuse for a list. I adore lists. When I was a child I would make lists of things to do when I was bored but would never get around to actually doing those things because I was having too much fun with the list.
1. Team Games. I swear by team games as a way to get over ladder anxiety, but not randomly entering a 2v2 game and hoping you don’t get paired with a shouty-caps alpha nerd who will take your gas if he decides he wants to go mass battlecruiser. There are plenty of places to find normal folks willing to play with you - one being the Adopt a Newb group on Battle.net. I got lucky and found a boyfriend of a friend who loves Starcraft as much as I do, and we are doing pretty well. He is way better at micro than I am, so he usually harasses with Reapers while I hang back and macro my butt off and on glorious days pull out the Cloaked Golden Armada. I’m getting a funny feeling in my pants just thinking about it. OK THEN. Playing these team games has seriously improved my 1v1, though - I’m thinking about upgrades more and my decision making has gotten a lot better.
2. Playing every day. In the last month, I think there has been maybe one day where I didn't play at least one match, and not out of some sense of obligation. Now that I’m working a full time normal person job I have less free time than I did when I was waiting tables, but I don’t feel like pieces of my soul are slowly decaying and falling off. But less free time means I have to prioritize what I do with it, and currently what I want to do with it most of the time is Starcraft. Playing every day has worked wonders with my reactions. Its one thing to read on a forum how one should respond to a certain tactic, but quite another to suddenly get DT rushed and have your brain screaming at you “What now captain!? The warp drive is about to overload!” The other day I shut down a proxy (and by proxy I mean Holy Shit There’s A Base In My Base) widow mine cheese that probably would have killed me a few weeks ago, leading to one of the most hilarious exchanges I've ever had on the ladder.
The scene: An army of stalker/immortal/colossus has already killed the Terran third and is neatly wiping up the natural, ready to move in for the final kill.
Proxy McNibnard (not his real name): UNEXPECTED. YOU DOUCHE
Me: proxy much?
Duke Nibnard of Cheesetopia (also not his real name): yah. in your mothers uterus
Game: Baron Sore Loser of the Island Souraboutlife (still not his real name) has left the game! You are victorious!
There is a special warm feeling that comes over you when someone calls you names and rage quits after you shut down their cheese and win. That feeling is called sweet retribution. Maniacal cackling is often an accompaniment.
3. No music/high ambient sounds. I turned off the background music pretty quickly after I started playing, otherwise I’d be mumbling it in my sleep by now. Some people like to listen to other music while they’re playing, but doing that usually distracts me. Starcraft is serious business, people. But I have found that if the only thing you have going on in your ears is the game sounds, you can actually hear things that are happening in areas you don’t have vision on. No joke, I’ve won games because I heard an SCV building something or a pylon warping in that I know I didn’t put there.
4. Apollo’s Bronze to Master’s videos. I cannot say enough how useful these videos have been for me. First of all, it taught me the importance of sentries and the Hallucinate ability. Because my micro (and thus force field placement) sucks horribly I don’t make sentries all that much, but now that Hallucination is free they are incredibly useful for scouting. Also, watching Apollo’s VODs helped me firm up my general opening build by balancing the structures I want with enough units to keep me alive in the early game. Finally, location hotkeys. They are the tits.
5. Those buttons on the side of the mouse. Once I assigned one of those buttons to be my “Select all Army Units” secondary hotkey my life has gotten so much easier. Sure, every once in awhile I make a mistake and recall a fake phoenix I sent out to scout, but not having to remember to add my units to a control group all the time is awesome. This may come back to bite me later.
So. Things are good on the Starcraft front, except for my PvZ which is abysmal. I’m just guessing here, but I’m pretty sure my winrate in PvT is 75% and probably about 40%-50% for PvP. PvZ? I’d say 11%, but I think that is too generous. It is THAT BAD. But I just found a VOD devoted to PvZ harassment/transitioning so I’m going to go watch that. Stay tuned, I expect to be in Gold in a couple weeks. Hopefully my foot will be healed by then and my crazed dance to the SC2 gods will be forever etched upon the memory of Youtube.
Showing posts with label Starcraft. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Starcraft. Show all posts
Monday, September 23, 2013
Friday, May 17, 2013
Starcraft Diaries: Lessons Learned at the Asscrack of Dawn
Never try to win “for reals” in the morning before you go to work. Sure, it’s great when you do crush your foes in an epic battle – then you can go to work with stories of your grand victories until everyone in the office starts backing away slowly because you’re talking complete and utter nonsense. Seriously, trying to explain a match in Starcraft to someone who’s never played it before is hilarious. In almost any other genre it’s pretty easy to explain to a non-gamer what’s going on. For example:
God of War: I have these baddass chain swords attached to my arms and I murder all the things and dance upon their corpses when I’m done. Oh also, my family is dead by my own hand so I am tragic and pale.
Reaction: Violent, but otherwise totally reasonable.
Final Fantasy VII: I am a vaguely feminine super-soldier with a really big sword and a posse of lovable weirdos trying to save the planet from being blown up by another vaguely feminine super-soldier also with a really big sword. And his zombie alien mother who lives in a vat. Also my memories are all faked because POLLUTION and zombie alien mom cells.
Reaction: Uh, little weird. But the jist is clear-ish.
Call of Duty: I have a gun. I shoot things with my gun and they die. Sometimes I get better guns.
Reaction: So that’s it, huh? Got it.
Starcraft: So I managed to pop out 3 Colossi by the 10-minute mark and push into his expansion while I took a third base and transitioned to Speedlot/Archon with +2/+2. Got a little dicey when he pushed my front with a Marauder/Medivac army but I held it off and still had units and a pylon by his base so I decided to GFKH. That's short for Go Effing Kill Him.
Reaction: You are a crazy person and I think your desk should be so far away from mine that we have to communicate via subspace.
I feel like I should warn people when I’m about to go on a tear talking about matches I’ve played. Personally I love talking gaming anecdotes, as evidenced by the hours of conversation I’ve had with friends about our Skyrim characters. But if you don’t play the game in question it could be a little dry and incomprehensible. Anyway, anecdotes ahoy! Holy alliteration, Batman!
Ok, now what was I talking about? Right, don’t play to win before you go to work. Case in point, yesterday I tried that and I was up against a Random whose first words to me after I wished him fun and luck were “@#$%! cheeser!”. Silly Battle.net swear filters. And then something else that was mostly “$%#!@”. Anyways the game dragged on super long and if I hadn’t had to quit so I could leave for work (and was almost late) I probably would have won. I’ll admit to some bad manners when I left – I told him I would’ve said “well played” except for the fact that he was an #@$hole. So I was rushed and angry and the day was not as awesome as it could have been.
This morning was different. I decided to do some completely bone-headed things on the ladder and accept that I would probably lose but the losses would be hilarious and help me with my mechanics and macro. I completely threw strategy and army composition out the window and focused on building only one unit in the first game and two in the second game.
So, what should a Protoss chose for a 1v1 Monobattle? Stalkers? Well, you could win but that would be boring. Skillrays? Everybody masses those. So... ARCHONS. I lost to another Protoss but it was some of the most fun I’ve had on the ladder in a long time. First I had to worry about dying early because all I had were cannons and a mothership core. And I’m sure my base would have looked hilarious because until I got my Dark Shrine up I had a gajillion gateways and no units. And I had all these extra minerals because I was expanding all over the place to get more gas so I used them to put cannons everywhere. I even thought about trying to wall off the middle of the map with cannons. The other guy pretty much left me alone until I was maxed out, but when the battle came he was maxed too except he had an actual army that made sense. It was a massacre, and I’m pretty sure he thought I was insane. But do you know what a max supply Archon army looks like floating across the map? It’s a thing of pure beauty.
The second game I decided against the mass Archons (definition of insanity and all) and decided to try the fast Zealot/Phoenix thing again. Except this time instead of a fellow silver I was matched with an unranked Random that, as it turns out, had been in the Master League. It was a glorious and crushing defeat; he had an observer over my base the whole time but I just ignored it because I was only building Zealots and Phoenixes. You have to commit to these things. At one point he even asked me what the hell I was doing, and I told him I was just taking some time to do dumb shit. There were rofls all around as my bases died.
I usually have time for three matches before I leave for work. On the third match I decided to play a straight game with an army that made sense and try, if not to win, at least to feel good about my performance. And I did end up winning, and I am positive it was partly due to the fact that I’d played the first two games without any thought of trying to win, only trying to improve a couple things in my macro. In this case it was keeping my money low (because teching up to Archons quickly is tough) and expanding on time (for the gas). Not only that – I never intended my rush-to-Colossus PvT build to stop there. The plan was always to start transitioning to Archons and take a third base while the Colossus push was happening. But it never got that far before. This time my opponent held off the push (I should have saved a couple of those gangly things but my micro is awful) and I had to execute the rest of the build. It was GLORIOUS. So I was in an amazing mood when I got to work.
I try to always play for fun and improvement first, but it doesn’t always happen. Sometimes, like the other day, I just really want to win and when I don’t I get frustrated and it’s not fun anymore. My advice to people like me, those who try to not be super-competitive but sometimes can’t help it, is to force yourself to do something stupid every once in a while just for fun. You’ll lose. Or sometimes you won’t.
Don’t think its lost on me that I’m talking about being competitive, seeing as when I wrote about Mass Effect 3 I identified myself as completely apathetic to winning. But, as it turns out I have a wickedly competitive side when the game in question is as rich and challenging as Starcraft is. Its ok, I like the taste of humble pie. And that’s the whole purpose of journaling – to be able to look back and see how your feelings have evolved.
Friday, May 3, 2013
Starcraft Diaries: Heart of the Swarm
Oh my lord, what is happening right now? Am I actually writing something? Has the sky fallen and all the land descended
into the desperate chaos of anarchy? It
could be posited that I really like hyperbole.
But yes, words are happening because HoTS happened and I enjoy being
completely late to the party. Just
kidding, I’ve had it since opening week but have been busy and haven’t been
playing much until this last week.
One thing about HoTS I was excited about is the fact that
Blizzard rearranged the league percentages so that it’s easier to get out of
Bronze. You might think that would make
getting into Silver less special, but that is completely not the case. I actually got frustrated and stopped playing
for a month or so because the last season of WoL I racked up a shit-ton of wins,
my win/loss ratio was crazy good, and I was regularly beating silver players. But day after day, no promotion. It was ridiculous. Bronze league was like a black hole that was impossible
to get out of. But no longer, the very
first HoTS season I was placed in Silver and it did not lessen my sense of
accomplishment, I felt like I belonged there.
I was losing a lot, but I was winning too. But then something weird happened: I got a
job. Shocking. So I didn't have as much time to play and
before I knew it the time had come for another placement match and I got placed
back in Bronze. But before I could get
bitter and disappointed I played a PvP match against someone who was doing
their placement match. Long story short,
they went one-base ring-o-cannons with no scouting. So I thought “Ok, this is a Bronze person”
and built a big enough army to melt the cannons
and stomp all over his base. Oh, and I built
said army in his natural expansion
with an expansion of my own right next door.
I wasn't joking about the lack of scouting. But then I saw on the screen that the owner of the account had at one time finished a season in Diamond and I felt like the water heater in that one Mythbusters episode that explodes through the roof of a house. I’m pretty sure that
whoever owned the account originally stopped playing and let his little brother
or something take over, because I don’t want to live in a world where one can
get into Diamond with a one-base no-scout CANNONS FOREVER tactic. The dubious benefit of all this is that I
went from Bronze to top 8 Silver in one match.
I think perhaps the ladder system is still evening itself out.
I say dubious benefit because there is no way in hell I
should be top 8 Silver. I’d rate myself
as probably top 100, possibly higher if I’m really in the zone. So the last couple days I have been losing
like crazy. Which is fine, and I’m sure
I’ll drop quite a few ranks before the end of the season but damn if that little star on my league
medal isn't an impetus to play more and improve.
I haven’t finished the campaign yet so I can’t comment on
that completely, but I do like the way Starcraft 2 campaigns introduce you to
the race in question over the course of the missions, adding more and more
units as the story goes along. By the
end of WoL I could play Terran passably well, but I switched to Protoss because
they are shiny. You may think I’m
joking, but I really am that superficial.
I stuck with it because I like the warp-in mechanic and I just could not
get my head around Zerg. As we all know,
humans are boring.
So, new units. I've mostly been concentrating on the Mothership Core (I can’t make
myself call it a Mama core for some reason).
It’s a really cool little unit and it’s saved my bacon quite a few
times, but I’m still not that great at using it to its full extent. I've dabbled with the Tempest and Oracle but
I think I’m going to try and integrate one unit at a time into my vocabulary.
In case this was entertaining to anyone else but me, I will
also mention something I learned today in the only match I won before
work. First, I love fast Zealots. A corollary to that is that Speedlot/Phoenix
is hilarious and COMPLETELY FAIR.
Especially when facing a Terran who’s going heavy on the Marauders,
scouts your Phoenixes too late, and only builds a few Vikings. Swarming Zealots + Lifting Phoenixes = RAGE
QUIT. I don’t know about most people,
but I get a perverse sense of enjoyment when someone quits without a ‘gg’. That person on the other end of the screen is
not calmly pondering how they could have done better, they are pounding their
fists on the keyboard in a rage and screaming about how Phoenixes are
imbalanced. That makes me incredibly
happy.
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
Starcraft Diaries - Build Orders
Even though I haven't been on the ladder for a week or so I've been meaning to write this particular post. And since I used up my first bad mood killing tactic (Dr. Who Binge-Watching) yesterday, I figured today I'd write about stuff I like until the creeping ennui dissipates. Which could mean there'll be a gajillion new posts on this thing before the day is out. Who knows! Alright, then.
I'm finally getting the mechanics down well enough to start concentrating on memorizing build orders, and since then my win-loss ratio has been extremely heartening. A buddy of mine in a much higher league than me even hinted that maybe I'll get promoted soon. Which would be amazing, but I'm trying not to think about it. Remember that part in "Ender's Shadow" where Bean schools all his classmates on being foolishly obsessed with their teams' ranks when there's an army of alien bugs waiting to slaughter them all? And so he convinces them to throw a blanket over the rankings board if the teachers won't take it down? They subsequently start practicing incredibly unconventional tactics without caring about how their teams are ranked because if that's your focus you'll just stagnate. I wish there was an option to hide your league ranking because I really wish I could go into every single game only trying to improve my macro and not care if I win or not. But I see the ranking and I can't help but care and get excited because omigod I'm almost in the top 8..... and then my macro suffers and I lose. Damn excitement hormones. Oh, and if you haven't read "Ender's Shadow", go do that. Read that whole series. It is awesome.
Since I'm getting the mechanics down, I'm starting work on a build for each matchup. I'm not good enough really to have more than one build going for each race, so I've been sitting myself down with the AI to practice the builds I've chosen over and over again. Which is really kind of relaxing. Not really going to talk about my PvZ because even though its much better than before I still have a tendency to get my FFE up and then my brain says "bluuuuh, what now captain?" and I freeze. So more practice there. But PvT has really been my friend because I sat down after losing a bunch of times to huge armies of Marine/Marauder/Tanks/Medivacs because that's what most everyone builds in Bronze. What I needed was something that could kill the Terran before they can get too many Tanks and Medivacs up, and it came to me that the Colossus melts tiny biological units if there aren't a bunch of Tanks back there killing them in their huge bloated faces. So I hit the vs. AI mode and practiced a build where I early expand and rush for Colossus until I could run up there with two or three Colossus at the 12 minute mark with some backup from a pylon by the watchtower. And then the winning started. It was AWESOME. Granted it doesn't always work - if there's early marine pressure I would pretty much die if I didn't see it coming. I even had a dude a while back who tricked me into thinking he was early expanding and then killed me with marines. I didn't scout very well.
As for PvP, there is something I have found in the Bronze league to happen, as Aristotle says, always or for the most part. I have this mental flow chart for it. First, check for the cannon rush. I've gotten really good at blocking the cannon rush and I haven't lost to one in a long time. But what I've found that is if someone tries and fails to cannon rush, if they decide to stay in the game, they almost always turtle in one or two bases and build void rays. And if there's no cannon rush? Its a 4-gate. Seriously, 90% of every PvP match I've ever been in has been one of these two scenarios. Still need to work on my defense against the 4-gate early game, but once I get that down I've decided my build is going to be full on Skytoss. Its worked in its larval form against a cannon-rush-switch-to-effing-VOID-RAYS very effectively because usually my economy is better and since I've been practicing against the AI I can get a lot of air units out pretty quickly. But I'm still working on the defense vs. the 4-gate. THERE ARE SO MANY PLACES TO HIDE PYLONS, you guys. But once I can get that early game defense down, it will be awesome. Why Skytoss? Isn't that borderline cheese? Maybe. But both these build orders have been helping me with the macro because they give me a regimented set of things I need to do in a loose order and so my money spending has been improving. And neither of them will work if my macro is bad. So there's that.
I realize the "Ender's Shadow" metaphor doesn't exactly work because Bean was advocating using seat-of-the-pants tactics that might lose and I've been talking about regimenting my thinking into narrow lines. But I'm using it anyway because I really do wish I could throw a blanket over my ladder ranking. And I'm regimenting my thinking so I can get better, not necessarily for winning. ... Oh god, that was a total lie. I love winning. But I like improvement too.
I'm finally getting the mechanics down well enough to start concentrating on memorizing build orders, and since then my win-loss ratio has been extremely heartening. A buddy of mine in a much higher league than me even hinted that maybe I'll get promoted soon. Which would be amazing, but I'm trying not to think about it. Remember that part in "Ender's Shadow" where Bean schools all his classmates on being foolishly obsessed with their teams' ranks when there's an army of alien bugs waiting to slaughter them all? And so he convinces them to throw a blanket over the rankings board if the teachers won't take it down? They subsequently start practicing incredibly unconventional tactics without caring about how their teams are ranked because if that's your focus you'll just stagnate. I wish there was an option to hide your league ranking because I really wish I could go into every single game only trying to improve my macro and not care if I win or not. But I see the ranking and I can't help but care and get excited because omigod I'm almost in the top 8..... and then my macro suffers and I lose. Damn excitement hormones. Oh, and if you haven't read "Ender's Shadow", go do that. Read that whole series. It is awesome.
Since I'm getting the mechanics down, I'm starting work on a build for each matchup. I'm not good enough really to have more than one build going for each race, so I've been sitting myself down with the AI to practice the builds I've chosen over and over again. Which is really kind of relaxing. Not really going to talk about my PvZ because even though its much better than before I still have a tendency to get my FFE up and then my brain says "bluuuuh, what now captain?" and I freeze. So more practice there. But PvT has really been my friend because I sat down after losing a bunch of times to huge armies of Marine/Marauder/Tanks/Medivacs because that's what most everyone builds in Bronze. What I needed was something that could kill the Terran before they can get too many Tanks and Medivacs up, and it came to me that the Colossus melts tiny biological units if there aren't a bunch of Tanks back there killing them in their huge bloated faces. So I hit the vs. AI mode and practiced a build where I early expand and rush for Colossus until I could run up there with two or three Colossus at the 12 minute mark with some backup from a pylon by the watchtower. And then the winning started. It was AWESOME. Granted it doesn't always work - if there's early marine pressure I would pretty much die if I didn't see it coming. I even had a dude a while back who tricked me into thinking he was early expanding and then killed me with marines. I didn't scout very well.
As for PvP, there is something I have found in the Bronze league to happen, as Aristotle says, always or for the most part. I have this mental flow chart for it. First, check for the cannon rush. I've gotten really good at blocking the cannon rush and I haven't lost to one in a long time. But what I've found that is if someone tries and fails to cannon rush, if they decide to stay in the game, they almost always turtle in one or two bases and build void rays. And if there's no cannon rush? Its a 4-gate. Seriously, 90% of every PvP match I've ever been in has been one of these two scenarios. Still need to work on my defense against the 4-gate early game, but once I get that down I've decided my build is going to be full on Skytoss. Its worked in its larval form against a cannon-rush-switch-to-effing-VOID-RAYS very effectively because usually my economy is better and since I've been practicing against the AI I can get a lot of air units out pretty quickly. But I'm still working on the defense vs. the 4-gate. THERE ARE SO MANY PLACES TO HIDE PYLONS, you guys. But once I can get that early game defense down, it will be awesome. Why Skytoss? Isn't that borderline cheese? Maybe. But both these build orders have been helping me with the macro because they give me a regimented set of things I need to do in a loose order and so my money spending has been improving. And neither of them will work if my macro is bad. So there's that.
I realize the "Ender's Shadow" metaphor doesn't exactly work because Bean was advocating using seat-of-the-pants tactics that might lose and I've been talking about regimenting my thinking into narrow lines. But I'm using it anyway because I really do wish I could throw a blanket over my ladder ranking. And I'm regimenting my thinking so I can get better, not necessarily for winning. ... Oh god, that was a total lie. I love winning. But I like improvement too.
Friday, November 30, 2012
Starcraft and Sexism
I can't really call this a Starcraft Diaries entry because I'll only be talking about the game briefly. I mentioned I wanted to talk about sexism in gaming and nerd culture, but I don't want to parrot all the opinions flying back and forth across the internet. For those of us blissfully unaware of this particular kerfuffle, the whole "fake nerd girl" thing was old news but has popped up again recently after a comic artist posted an incredibly ill-conceived (and poorly written) post on Facebook about girls at conventions dressing up in their revealing little costumes and getting their evil meathooks into all the nerds with their horrifying lady-parts. Leaving aside for a moment his conception of nerd girls as semi-attractive attention whores who can't get their adoration fix in the "real world", I feel compelled to point out that without comic artists and their imaginations girls would not be dressed up in revealing superheroine outfits in the first place. Yes, we get all tarted up in our Catwoman costumes, but those outfits were conceived and published by the very people complaining about us. Without Powergirl there would be no Powergirl cosplay. I don't believe in dressing up as an excuse to dress like a lady of the evening, but seriously - we weren't the ones who designed these things. Dudes did (for the most part). And if I had the self-confidence and the shape to back it up, you bet your sweet ass I would be prancing around dressed as the Scarlet Witch at my next convention.
Bringing this into the Starcraft forum, I have a confession to make. I have been guilty of in-game sexism. Its true. When I first set up my Battle.net account and ventured on the ladder I made sure to pick an avatar that was a girl and lamented that I didn't have a great selection even though a great deal of the player icons were pretty damn gender-neutral. Why did I do that? Because I had a bug up my butt about everyone I faced on the ladder knowing I was female, when it really shouldn't matter. And further I tend to assume whoever's on the other end of the connection is a dude no matter what their avatar is. Because I'd gotten this idea in my head that I was one of the few, the Girls Who Play Starcraft. It was a revelation because I was starting to fall into the "grrl power" trap, proclaiming my femininity and demanding that others acknowledge it when I should be focused on my skill vs. the other person's skill and nothing more. After I took my grrl power out back and shot it, things have been just fine. I'm not a Girl Who Plays Starcraft, I'm a Starcraft player that happens to be a girl. Which is how I hope things will be in the gaming world soon - we're all nerds. Some of us are ladies and some of us are dudes but we all love the same things and we should be able to celebrate them together.
That might take a while to happen, unfortunately, because we ladies have had to fight to get recognized as "real nerds" and that fight isn't quite over. So a lot of us have a gigantic chip on our shoulder about it which leads us to demand recognition of our boobs and our encyclopedic knowledge of the Marvel timeline. Its a side effect I try to avoid, but its easier for me because I've had a great "coming out as a nerd" experience. If I've ever been informed that I can't be a real comics reader or I must be shopping for my boyfriend, those instances are so overwhelmed by positive experiences that I've forgotten them. I've been blessed to encounter some of the most amazing comic/game store employees in the world who never assumed that I was only gift shopping and were just excited that I was into the same things as them. I still remember the day I picked up the first Xenosaga game and the (cute) guy at the counter just grinned and said "Oh, bless your heart" - he knew the game was for me and no one else. My Seattle GM was a bouncer at a saloon I worked at who introduced me to D&D because he could tell I regretted never getting into it. But not everyone has experienced the same acceptance as I have, who are accused of being 5's who want to feel like 9's or fetishized by those around them for being good at Team Fortress Classic. And that leads to shoulder-chips and division in a community which should accept all comers with real passion in their souls.
I sat myself down at one point and made myself imagine things from a guy's perspective, and the conclusion I come to is that I kind of get it. Let me tell you a story. When I was young I loved the Phantom of the Opera, and by love I mean "was completely goddamn obsessed". I read the book several times, watched at least five movie versions of the story, and knew the entire libretto to the Lloyd Webber musical (not just the highlights). You know that note that Christine hits at the end of the main theme? The one that is so high it wouldn't fit on the regular lines of the treble clef? I made myself hit that once, all alone in my car in the middle of an abandoned parking lot. I then swore I would never do that again. When I was thirteen my grandma got me tickets to see the show in San Francisco and the squeal when I saw the tickets could have been heard for miles. And you know what happened when my siblings' next birthdays came around? Grandma took both of them to see Phantom in turn. I was furious. The Phantom of the Opera was my thing. I was the one who memorized all the music, read the book, and hit that horrifically high note that one time (which will never be spoken of again). After all that work of being a genuine fangirl my siblings got to witness the pearl of my heart's desire just my saying they were interested in it too and wanted to go? The horror! But you know what I got out of all the resentment - nothing. Just bad feelings that started to poison the very thing that I loved. So yes, nerd girls seem to effortlessly attract all this attention just by virtue of being female that one might forget that we do actually love all this stuff as much as you guys do. My siblings didn't want to see Phantom out of some perverse desire to elbow into my favorite story, they wanted to see it because they liked it. But instead of accepting this and nerding out with them about which bits were our favorites I closed myself off and missed out on some valuable bonding.
I guess what I'm getting at is that we're all people, and we all have our insecurities and issues. But if we get over them our community will be so much the better for it. And the next time you turn your nose up at the girl at the comic store who isn't talking to you for being a stuck-up bitch, remember that she's probably just as scared of talking to people as you are. I know. I AM her.
Bringing this into the Starcraft forum, I have a confession to make. I have been guilty of in-game sexism. Its true. When I first set up my Battle.net account and ventured on the ladder I made sure to pick an avatar that was a girl and lamented that I didn't have a great selection even though a great deal of the player icons were pretty damn gender-neutral. Why did I do that? Because I had a bug up my butt about everyone I faced on the ladder knowing I was female, when it really shouldn't matter. And further I tend to assume whoever's on the other end of the connection is a dude no matter what their avatar is. Because I'd gotten this idea in my head that I was one of the few, the Girls Who Play Starcraft. It was a revelation because I was starting to fall into the "grrl power" trap, proclaiming my femininity and demanding that others acknowledge it when I should be focused on my skill vs. the other person's skill and nothing more. After I took my grrl power out back and shot it, things have been just fine. I'm not a Girl Who Plays Starcraft, I'm a Starcraft player that happens to be a girl. Which is how I hope things will be in the gaming world soon - we're all nerds. Some of us are ladies and some of us are dudes but we all love the same things and we should be able to celebrate them together.
That might take a while to happen, unfortunately, because we ladies have had to fight to get recognized as "real nerds" and that fight isn't quite over. So a lot of us have a gigantic chip on our shoulder about it which leads us to demand recognition of our boobs and our encyclopedic knowledge of the Marvel timeline. Its a side effect I try to avoid, but its easier for me because I've had a great "coming out as a nerd" experience. If I've ever been informed that I can't be a real comics reader or I must be shopping for my boyfriend, those instances are so overwhelmed by positive experiences that I've forgotten them. I've been blessed to encounter some of the most amazing comic/game store employees in the world who never assumed that I was only gift shopping and were just excited that I was into the same things as them. I still remember the day I picked up the first Xenosaga game and the (cute) guy at the counter just grinned and said "Oh, bless your heart" - he knew the game was for me and no one else. My Seattle GM was a bouncer at a saloon I worked at who introduced me to D&D because he could tell I regretted never getting into it. But not everyone has experienced the same acceptance as I have, who are accused of being 5's who want to feel like 9's or fetishized by those around them for being good at Team Fortress Classic. And that leads to shoulder-chips and division in a community which should accept all comers with real passion in their souls.
I sat myself down at one point and made myself imagine things from a guy's perspective, and the conclusion I come to is that I kind of get it. Let me tell you a story. When I was young I loved the Phantom of the Opera, and by love I mean "was completely goddamn obsessed". I read the book several times, watched at least five movie versions of the story, and knew the entire libretto to the Lloyd Webber musical (not just the highlights). You know that note that Christine hits at the end of the main theme? The one that is so high it wouldn't fit on the regular lines of the treble clef? I made myself hit that once, all alone in my car in the middle of an abandoned parking lot. I then swore I would never do that again. When I was thirteen my grandma got me tickets to see the show in San Francisco and the squeal when I saw the tickets could have been heard for miles. And you know what happened when my siblings' next birthdays came around? Grandma took both of them to see Phantom in turn. I was furious. The Phantom of the Opera was my thing. I was the one who memorized all the music, read the book, and hit that horrifically high note that one time (which will never be spoken of again). After all that work of being a genuine fangirl my siblings got to witness the pearl of my heart's desire just my saying they were interested in it too and wanted to go? The horror! But you know what I got out of all the resentment - nothing. Just bad feelings that started to poison the very thing that I loved. So yes, nerd girls seem to effortlessly attract all this attention just by virtue of being female that one might forget that we do actually love all this stuff as much as you guys do. My siblings didn't want to see Phantom out of some perverse desire to elbow into my favorite story, they wanted to see it because they liked it. But instead of accepting this and nerding out with them about which bits were our favorites I closed myself off and missed out on some valuable bonding.
I guess what I'm getting at is that we're all people, and we all have our insecurities and issues. But if we get over them our community will be so much the better for it. And the next time you turn your nose up at the girl at the comic store who isn't talking to you for being a stuck-up bitch, remember that she's probably just as scared of talking to people as you are. I know. I AM her.
Sunday, October 7, 2012
Starcraft Diaries #3 - Out of the Frying Pan
Ah, the keeping of journals is a wonderful thing, allowing one to look back and see an earlier version of oneself in the days when the future was golden and one had not yet stupidly fallen prey to cannon rushing. More than once. My shame is endless. I'm serious about the journaling, though - I think it might be interesting to chart my progress and changes in perspective while I learn this game and look back later to see how silly I was. So that might be what this blog is turning into, we'll see. I'm buying Guild Wars 2 soon, and I'm sure I'll have plenty to say about that. Also Assassin's Creed 3. By the way, I am incredibly sleep deprived, so this may get a tad rambly.
Until very recently I inhabited the Practice League. I've read varying opinions on the usefulness (or lack thereof) of playing through the Practice League, and I'm so far firmly on Team Useful. For one thing, the fact that the novice maps are designed to prolong the game by circumventing cheese tactics means you have more time to learn the mechanics and focus on strengthening your early game macro. At least that's what it did for me. Also, playing through the Practice League gave me a taste of what it was like to win. Yes, yes, I know I said losing is good for you - and it is. But knowing what its like to outwit your opponent is a great motivator, and unless one is some kind of RTS savant that won't be the permeating experience when you first hit the ladder. So I played my 50 practice games and headed off to the qualifying matches, telling myself I would probably lose every single one. I was not entirely wrong - technically I won one match because the other guy disconnected right when the game started. That gave me a WAY better starting ranking than I should have gotten, but the universe has since balanced itself out. And that's ok, because even though losing most of the time is frustrating and recounting the times I have actually won is pretty awesome, that's not really why I'm doing this.
So, why am I doing this? Why am I focusing so much serious attention on a game when I could be doing a million other things that aren't as much work? I recall what I said about FPS games and how I never bothered to try to improve because I wasn't interested enough. The case here is the exact opposite; I've watched quite a few pro matches at this point and its just freaking fascinating. Its like watching a concert pianist amalgamated with an expert chess player topped with a sprinkling of cartographer. I used to play in an orchestra, and the feeling of all the parts coming together to form this awesome sonic experience is something I've never been able to replicate. But when I manage to go a whole game without getting supply-blocked, or I time a chronoboost just right I get a bit of that feeling back. I look forward to the days when I can actually time a build properly - I bet that'll feel amazing.
But that's not the only reason. My therapist might say that this is a desperate attempt to prove that the years I spent serving the foods were not a complete waste, and if she did she would be really smart because that is totally correct. Here's the thing - my restaurant macro is amazing. Am I an unhinged weirdo? What the hell am I talking about? Listen. Being a server (or a bartender) involves a series of steps - take order, input, deliver, check, hound for payment, etc. It also involves being able to mentally process that series of steps over multiple areas at once, prioritizing tasks according to importance, and accounting for inevitable changes. The kitchen is your base, and the tables are where the enemy lurks, waiting to unleash their army upon you. Or sometimes the tables are your expansions, depending on how far you want to take the metaphor. Out of Bombay Sapphire? Supply blocked. Quadruple sat? Early aggression. Full hands in, full hands out? Constant unit production. And so on. Some people spend years waiting tables and never get the ability to handle more than three tables at a time. I was not one of those people. And so in this era of finding a career (or something) it would be really nice to know that those years of hopping from bar to bar are something other than notches on the bedpost of wasted youth. I will transpose those skills to something by god, and yes that something is a video game. I did say I would throw myself at this thing until one of us breaks.
That turned out a little more autobiographical than I originally anticipated, but that's the nature of the journal. Also, did I mention the lack of sleep? Yes, I believe I did. But I will get back to actual game talk briefly. Canon Rushing. Its one of the most frustrating things ever, only because it is so EASY to prevent if you remember to scout properly. That's on my list of things to do: avoid getting supply blocked, don't forget probes, and NEVER get canon rushed AGAIN because you DIDN'T SCOUT. This probably isn't the greatest tactic, but whenever I'm up against Protoss I just build a Forge as soon as I can because I assume that's probably what's going to happen.
Until very recently I inhabited the Practice League. I've read varying opinions on the usefulness (or lack thereof) of playing through the Practice League, and I'm so far firmly on Team Useful. For one thing, the fact that the novice maps are designed to prolong the game by circumventing cheese tactics means you have more time to learn the mechanics and focus on strengthening your early game macro. At least that's what it did for me. Also, playing through the Practice League gave me a taste of what it was like to win. Yes, yes, I know I said losing is good for you - and it is. But knowing what its like to outwit your opponent is a great motivator, and unless one is some kind of RTS savant that won't be the permeating experience when you first hit the ladder. So I played my 50 practice games and headed off to the qualifying matches, telling myself I would probably lose every single one. I was not entirely wrong - technically I won one match because the other guy disconnected right when the game started. That gave me a WAY better starting ranking than I should have gotten, but the universe has since balanced itself out. And that's ok, because even though losing most of the time is frustrating and recounting the times I have actually won is pretty awesome, that's not really why I'm doing this.
So, why am I doing this? Why am I focusing so much serious attention on a game when I could be doing a million other things that aren't as much work? I recall what I said about FPS games and how I never bothered to try to improve because I wasn't interested enough. The case here is the exact opposite; I've watched quite a few pro matches at this point and its just freaking fascinating. Its like watching a concert pianist amalgamated with an expert chess player topped with a sprinkling of cartographer. I used to play in an orchestra, and the feeling of all the parts coming together to form this awesome sonic experience is something I've never been able to replicate. But when I manage to go a whole game without getting supply-blocked, or I time a chronoboost just right I get a bit of that feeling back. I look forward to the days when I can actually time a build properly - I bet that'll feel amazing.
But that's not the only reason. My therapist might say that this is a desperate attempt to prove that the years I spent serving the foods were not a complete waste, and if she did she would be really smart because that is totally correct. Here's the thing - my restaurant macro is amazing. Am I an unhinged weirdo? What the hell am I talking about? Listen. Being a server (or a bartender) involves a series of steps - take order, input, deliver, check, hound for payment, etc. It also involves being able to mentally process that series of steps over multiple areas at once, prioritizing tasks according to importance, and accounting for inevitable changes. The kitchen is your base, and the tables are where the enemy lurks, waiting to unleash their army upon you. Or sometimes the tables are your expansions, depending on how far you want to take the metaphor. Out of Bombay Sapphire? Supply blocked. Quadruple sat? Early aggression. Full hands in, full hands out? Constant unit production. And so on. Some people spend years waiting tables and never get the ability to handle more than three tables at a time. I was not one of those people. And so in this era of finding a career (or something) it would be really nice to know that those years of hopping from bar to bar are something other than notches on the bedpost of wasted youth. I will transpose those skills to something by god, and yes that something is a video game. I did say I would throw myself at this thing until one of us breaks.
That turned out a little more autobiographical than I originally anticipated, but that's the nature of the journal. Also, did I mention the lack of sleep? Yes, I believe I did. But I will get back to actual game talk briefly. Canon Rushing. Its one of the most frustrating things ever, only because it is so EASY to prevent if you remember to scout properly. That's on my list of things to do: avoid getting supply blocked, don't forget probes, and NEVER get canon rushed AGAIN because you DIDN'T SCOUT. This probably isn't the greatest tactic, but whenever I'm up against Protoss I just build a Forge as soon as I can because I assume that's probably what's going to happen.
Thursday, September 27, 2012
Starcraft Diaries #2: Losing is Awesome
Alright, I admit I'm indulging in a bit of hyperbole there. Losing is not really awesome, but its good for you. Like broccoli and showering. Winning feels amazing, don't get me wrong. Watching your horde of carefully built up units tearing through an enemy base until you see that 'gg' in the chat before the victory screen pops up engenders a special kind of elation. Sometimes there isn't the 'gg', sometimes there's an angry "f u ck yuou" (misspelling taken verbatim) but that is a separate thing that I will get into later. It will involve some gloating, and I'd like to make myself look as humble and intelligent as I can before I go there.
As great as winning is, its hard to really learn anything from it. Sure, you can watch the replay and notice that you maybe could have crushed your enemy even more if you did this one thing, or made more of that unit, but the real knowledge comes from losing. As a for-instance, take that win I talked about earlier vs. Zerg and the Nydus worms. Earlier that week I lost a match to a Zerg player who completely murdered me with burrowing roaches. The horrible death screams of my poor Zealots still haunt me a bit, but I learned several things from re-watching that match. Some of these things might seem obvious, but I am a noob so lay off. First, it is never too late to get detection. Second, do not panic and try to warp your units in right next to the attacking army, they will just get killed. (I know, I know. Horrible. Panic makes me stupid.) Third, don't marry yourself to your plans. If I'd been a little quicker on the draw I would have realized that he'd spent so much money on roaches that if I'd switched over to Stargate I might have survived. But no, I had gone robo and for the love of god I was GOING ROBO. Those poor Colossi didn't stand a chance. But because of that humiliating loss, when I came up against Nydus worms later my brain immediately went "ground forces / hidden expansion + Stargate * destroy the Spire = winning". I suppose I could make a real-world parallel here about how challenge is the only way to grow as a person and stagnation is analogous to death.
Along those lines, sometimes when I get horribly defeated I message the person after the game to see if they want to play again later. Pretty much everyone I've asked has been amenable to it - which brings me back to the social aspect. You don't have to be nervous about adding people to your friends list - I'm pretty sure most people out there are excited when someone they're playing turns out to be a nice person. And then you can 2v2 with someone you're reasonably sure won't rage quit on you if you're losing. This happened during my first 2v2 match: one of the guys I friended invited me to play 2v2 and even though I'd never done that before and shit be CRAZY when there's 4 people playing we did well, and about 20 minutes in we'd parked outside of their base and were chipping away nicely. But when the balance shifted and it looked like we might win, one of our opponents just ditched his partner. Teamwork apparently was not a thing for this dude. It was a bit sad.
So while losing feels terrible, I try to look at is as an opportunity for improvement. Every time you fall to a play you haven't seen before means a future instance of not falling for it again. You know, once you get over the rage because it really does suck to get killed especially when you feel like you're finally executing your build well. Those are the times you feel like you're never going to get any better, which is not true. And you might feel like it isn't worth trying to build up good habits because there's always going to be someone with faster fingers than you who'll charge up your ramp with like a gajillion Marines and completely obliterate all your well-laid plans. Also not true. Take hotkeys an control groups for example - when you don't know all the keyboard shortcuts your play will be a lot slower than someone who's just using the mouse. Until you learn them all, and then you will be handing that mouse-wielding bastard his own ass, barbecued and served up with some hot sauce. And while it does take a few extra seconds to bind your relevant structures and units to control groups, which may get you killed a few times until you get the hang of it, training yourself to always use them is one of the best things you can do. I was lucky - I discovered how to use control groups while I was playing the campaign and now I cannot imagine trying to play without them. Yes, there will be losing while you learn good habits, but I feel that noobs like myself have the golden opportunity to start learning them now while we don't have any bad habits to try and override.
Why, you may ask, am I being so serious about all this? After all, Starcraft is just a game, and in the whirlwind timeline of gaming where there's always something new coming out its probably close to middle age by now. Like I said earlier, these are all things you can import into real life; not getting angry when things don't go your way, taking the time to learn to do something right instead of fast and possibly sloppy, treating people like human beings with feelilngs, etc. It just so happens that I am drawing these lessons from a game that I happen to really enjoy. Also I am broke and I don't have any other games to play right now. And further, I have to spend a lot of time in front of my computer for work, so there's a lot of Starcraft happening in the calms between server crashes and email problems.
Ok ok, that's enough of that altruistic and pseudo-insightful talk, I said I had some gloating to do and I'm going to do that now. I got cussed out for the first time the other day! Why is that a good thing? Because I hammered a dude so hard he couldn't even spell right, that's why. This was not a replay I watched to find avenues of improvement, this was a replay I watched for the pure evil joy of it. And after I watched it I realized why I made the guy so mad - I inadvertently engaged in some psychological warfare. Things were going well - I'd built up a solid army of Stalkers and Zealots and had attacked his expansion which was defended by turrets, siege tanks, and marines. I had enough money to keep warping units in, but the tanks were causing me some problems until I realized I had a few Phoenixes I'd built for harassment and kind of forgot about. So I brought those suckers in and started lifting tanks off the ground so my army could concentrate on the turrets and marines. Then I thought seeing all those tanks suspended in the air was hilarious so I trained a few more Phoenixes and just kept at it until my opponent verbally flipped me off and exited the game. I imagine there's few things more annoying than having someone levitating all your tanks off the ground. Man, that was funny.
As great as winning is, its hard to really learn anything from it. Sure, you can watch the replay and notice that you maybe could have crushed your enemy even more if you did this one thing, or made more of that unit, but the real knowledge comes from losing. As a for-instance, take that win I talked about earlier vs. Zerg and the Nydus worms. Earlier that week I lost a match to a Zerg player who completely murdered me with burrowing roaches. The horrible death screams of my poor Zealots still haunt me a bit, but I learned several things from re-watching that match. Some of these things might seem obvious, but I am a noob so lay off. First, it is never too late to get detection. Second, do not panic and try to warp your units in right next to the attacking army, they will just get killed. (I know, I know. Horrible. Panic makes me stupid.) Third, don't marry yourself to your plans. If I'd been a little quicker on the draw I would have realized that he'd spent so much money on roaches that if I'd switched over to Stargate I might have survived. But no, I had gone robo and for the love of god I was GOING ROBO. Those poor Colossi didn't stand a chance. But because of that humiliating loss, when I came up against Nydus worms later my brain immediately went "ground forces / hidden expansion + Stargate * destroy the Spire = winning". I suppose I could make a real-world parallel here about how challenge is the only way to grow as a person and stagnation is analogous to death.
Along those lines, sometimes when I get horribly defeated I message the person after the game to see if they want to play again later. Pretty much everyone I've asked has been amenable to it - which brings me back to the social aspect. You don't have to be nervous about adding people to your friends list - I'm pretty sure most people out there are excited when someone they're playing turns out to be a nice person. And then you can 2v2 with someone you're reasonably sure won't rage quit on you if you're losing. This happened during my first 2v2 match: one of the guys I friended invited me to play 2v2 and even though I'd never done that before and shit be CRAZY when there's 4 people playing we did well, and about 20 minutes in we'd parked outside of their base and were chipping away nicely. But when the balance shifted and it looked like we might win, one of our opponents just ditched his partner. Teamwork apparently was not a thing for this dude. It was a bit sad.
So while losing feels terrible, I try to look at is as an opportunity for improvement. Every time you fall to a play you haven't seen before means a future instance of not falling for it again. You know, once you get over the rage because it really does suck to get killed especially when you feel like you're finally executing your build well. Those are the times you feel like you're never going to get any better, which is not true. And you might feel like it isn't worth trying to build up good habits because there's always going to be someone with faster fingers than you who'll charge up your ramp with like a gajillion Marines and completely obliterate all your well-laid plans. Also not true. Take hotkeys an control groups for example - when you don't know all the keyboard shortcuts your play will be a lot slower than someone who's just using the mouse. Until you learn them all, and then you will be handing that mouse-wielding bastard his own ass, barbecued and served up with some hot sauce. And while it does take a few extra seconds to bind your relevant structures and units to control groups, which may get you killed a few times until you get the hang of it, training yourself to always use them is one of the best things you can do. I was lucky - I discovered how to use control groups while I was playing the campaign and now I cannot imagine trying to play without them. Yes, there will be losing while you learn good habits, but I feel that noobs like myself have the golden opportunity to start learning them now while we don't have any bad habits to try and override.
Why, you may ask, am I being so serious about all this? After all, Starcraft is just a game, and in the whirlwind timeline of gaming where there's always something new coming out its probably close to middle age by now. Like I said earlier, these are all things you can import into real life; not getting angry when things don't go your way, taking the time to learn to do something right instead of fast and possibly sloppy, treating people like human beings with feelilngs, etc. It just so happens that I am drawing these lessons from a game that I happen to really enjoy. Also I am broke and I don't have any other games to play right now. And further, I have to spend a lot of time in front of my computer for work, so there's a lot of Starcraft happening in the calms between server crashes and email problems.
Ok ok, that's enough of that altruistic and pseudo-insightful talk, I said I had some gloating to do and I'm going to do that now. I got cussed out for the first time the other day! Why is that a good thing? Because I hammered a dude so hard he couldn't even spell right, that's why. This was not a replay I watched to find avenues of improvement, this was a replay I watched for the pure evil joy of it. And after I watched it I realized why I made the guy so mad - I inadvertently engaged in some psychological warfare. Things were going well - I'd built up a solid army of Stalkers and Zealots and had attacked his expansion which was defended by turrets, siege tanks, and marines. I had enough money to keep warping units in, but the tanks were causing me some problems until I realized I had a few Phoenixes I'd built for harassment and kind of forgot about. So I brought those suckers in and started lifting tanks off the ground so my army could concentrate on the turrets and marines. Then I thought seeing all those tanks suspended in the air was hilarious so I trained a few more Phoenixes and just kept at it until my opponent verbally flipped me off and exited the game. I imagine there's few things more annoying than having someone levitating all your tanks off the ground. Man, that was funny.
Sunday, September 23, 2012
Starcraft Diaries #1
Moving to a different state is hard - its expensive, you have to find a whole new social circle, to say nothing of finding a new job. I don't regret it for one second, however, as this move is part of what I'm hoping will be the start of "Life 2.0" where I figure out how to do what I love and make a living instead of just settling for something that makes me enough to pay the bills but slowly saps my will to live. So, goodbye bartending/serving and walking home with tips every night and hello poverty. Also, to quote a horribly beaten horse, you can take the girl out of California... etc.
The result of all this is having to be careful about what games I buy. Titles I could get real mileage out of would be key, and while I'm looking forward to being able to buy Guild Wars 2 soon, I was getting the itch for a new game well before it had been released. I'm still enjoying gaming online, but I was ready to move on from ME3. I still enjoy playing it, but I had already gotten the hang of all the classes I'd unlocked and the only challenge beyond that was getting better at the shooter aspect, something I've established is not my cup of tea really. There's a reason I love playing Vanguards - melee is fun. Also I was getting a little frustrated seeing people popping into games with their shiny new N7 class characters after I'd spent the whole afternoon getting enough credits to buy a Premium Spectre pack only to unlock the human Soldier. AGAIN. Seriously, that CCG thing Bioware put in there kind of makes me grind my teeth.
Anyway. All this led me to pick up Starcraft 2. You play with other people, and you don't have to have awesome hand-eye coordination. Also I had a vague memory from way back when the first game came out of completely failing to get it and rage-quitting after maybe the fourth mission. I've never let a genre beat me before, I thought, this is just shameful. So that's what I've been doing the past few weeks, and when I get into a game as complicated as Starcraft I really get into it. I've been reading strategy articles, watching pros play to get ideas, drilling myself on hotkeys, the whole nine yards. Reminds me of back when I was playing Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne. I had the demon fusion tree pretty much memorized because I was reading the strategy guide at work, and I could school you for a goddamn hour about using the phases of the moon to your advantage. Which is something I love in a game - surface simplicity (collecting demons, or building a strong base) that covers layers upon layers of complexity.
So I finished the campaign and just started playing with real humans online. It took me a while, at first I was nervous so all I was doing was playing the computer in vs. AI mode. But a couple things happened that shoved me into the quick match scene with a vengeance. First, I watched a bunch of Day9's Newbie Tuesday videos, which not only gave me some great fundamental tips but also enlightened me to the fact that people on the ladder are just people and most of them are pretty nice. And, at least in the practice league, probably just as scared about playing against other people. Which has been true almost across the board. The second thing was a couple weeks ago at my DnD Next game. There's a breed of tabletop gamer that can get really annoying to me, the person who's been gaming for so long they view themselves as some kind of gaming oracle who's opinions have ceased to be such and have instead morphed into golden morsels of wisdom. And we, the lowly peons who did not roll our first d20 before we could walk, sit at their feet waiting to hear the honeyed words of nerd truth fall from their lips. To be fair, this particular person in my group is really an awesome dude, but he does tend to slip into the nerd superiority from time to time. This time it was after I mentioned I'd been playing Starcraft; he asked me if I'd been playing online and I said not yet, I was still getting the hang of playing against the computer since this was really the first RTS I'd gotten into. "Don't even bother," he said, "There's no way you'll be able to catch up. Those people have been playing that game for years." I don't react well to being told I can't or shouldn't do something. Nuts to you, sir!, I thought. I will throw myself at this game until one of us breaks.
So far it hasn't been too bad. I'm still in the practice league, so everyone else is pretty much just as much of a noob as me. And even once you get on the ladder you aren't going to be matched with someone completely out of your league from what I've heard. My win/loss ratio is about even right now, which think is pretty good for someone completely new to the RTS thing. I even won my very first online match. I've been saving almost all of my replays and I actually like watching my losses to figure out what I did wrong. But I've had a couple awesome wins so far. Fair warning, if you don't play Starcraft the following will probably be far less exciting for you than it is for me.
Awesome Win #1: First time a Zerg player had pulled out a Nydus Network on me and at first I was convinced I was going to lose. He popped a bunch of roaches and zerglings into my base pretty early and did some major damage to my economy before I realized what was going on. What saved me was that I managed to hide my expansion so I don't think he knew I had built a Stargate until it was too late, and the fact that he spent all his resources on harassing me with the Nydus worms meant he'd spent almost nothing on anti-air units. I ended up sacrificing my main and just throwing what I had left at his base to try and cripple his economy before he could wise up and start countering air units. It worked - I managed to pump out a bunch of Zealots and a couple more Void Rays before he found my expansion. After that, it was cake, and the moment where I switched from "Oh god, I'm going to die, might as well go out in a blaze of glory" to "holy crap I might actually win this" was an amazing feeling. The end count was absolutely no structures left standing on either side, and me with a handful of Zealots and Void Rays.
Awesome Win #2: This was an example of how one can make a horrible and stupid mistake but still adapt and pull a win out of it. Watching the replay, I made a lot of mistakes at the beginning. I missed my first pylon and wasted a Chronoboost because of that, and I built my first Gateway really late. But the kicker was when I decided to try a wall-off for the first time and building-blocked ALL my probes inside my base. Yes, that is correct, I locked myself into my own base. So, unless I destroyed an expensive building I would have no expansion, no proxy pylon, no nothing. Well, I decided to run with it, try some early aggression and possibly die horribly. Luckily I had a pylon outside my base, so I started warping in Stalkers a fast as I could and sent them to hang out under the cliff of my opponent's base while I got Blink. And I added a Stargate for good measure - for some people its "When behind, Dark Shrine" but for me apparently its "When you're losing the fray, go Void Ray." By the time Blink was done I had a decent number of Stalkers outside his base; so I blinked them all up the cliff and started tearing into his units. I held back the Void Ray at first until I saw a couple siege tanks and managed to warp in a few more Stalkers to clean up his Marines and ended up winning. So I didn't feel so stupid, but I did feel like sending him a chat that said something like "Hey dude, sorry I came at you so early, but I walled all my probes into my own base. Like a boss." Watching the replay was pretty enlightening - the only reason that had worked was pure luck. He'd built missile turrets on the opposite side of his base. If he'd spread out his turrets or if I'd picked the other side of his base to camp out at I would have been dead.
The result of all this is having to be careful about what games I buy. Titles I could get real mileage out of would be key, and while I'm looking forward to being able to buy Guild Wars 2 soon, I was getting the itch for a new game well before it had been released. I'm still enjoying gaming online, but I was ready to move on from ME3. I still enjoy playing it, but I had already gotten the hang of all the classes I'd unlocked and the only challenge beyond that was getting better at the shooter aspect, something I've established is not my cup of tea really. There's a reason I love playing Vanguards - melee is fun. Also I was getting a little frustrated seeing people popping into games with their shiny new N7 class characters after I'd spent the whole afternoon getting enough credits to buy a Premium Spectre pack only to unlock the human Soldier. AGAIN. Seriously, that CCG thing Bioware put in there kind of makes me grind my teeth.
Anyway. All this led me to pick up Starcraft 2. You play with other people, and you don't have to have awesome hand-eye coordination. Also I had a vague memory from way back when the first game came out of completely failing to get it and rage-quitting after maybe the fourth mission. I've never let a genre beat me before, I thought, this is just shameful. So that's what I've been doing the past few weeks, and when I get into a game as complicated as Starcraft I really get into it. I've been reading strategy articles, watching pros play to get ideas, drilling myself on hotkeys, the whole nine yards. Reminds me of back when I was playing Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne. I had the demon fusion tree pretty much memorized because I was reading the strategy guide at work, and I could school you for a goddamn hour about using the phases of the moon to your advantage. Which is something I love in a game - surface simplicity (collecting demons, or building a strong base) that covers layers upon layers of complexity.
So I finished the campaign and just started playing with real humans online. It took me a while, at first I was nervous so all I was doing was playing the computer in vs. AI mode. But a couple things happened that shoved me into the quick match scene with a vengeance. First, I watched a bunch of Day9's Newbie Tuesday videos, which not only gave me some great fundamental tips but also enlightened me to the fact that people on the ladder are just people and most of them are pretty nice. And, at least in the practice league, probably just as scared about playing against other people. Which has been true almost across the board. The second thing was a couple weeks ago at my DnD Next game. There's a breed of tabletop gamer that can get really annoying to me, the person who's been gaming for so long they view themselves as some kind of gaming oracle who's opinions have ceased to be such and have instead morphed into golden morsels of wisdom. And we, the lowly peons who did not roll our first d20 before we could walk, sit at their feet waiting to hear the honeyed words of nerd truth fall from their lips. To be fair, this particular person in my group is really an awesome dude, but he does tend to slip into the nerd superiority from time to time. This time it was after I mentioned I'd been playing Starcraft; he asked me if I'd been playing online and I said not yet, I was still getting the hang of playing against the computer since this was really the first RTS I'd gotten into. "Don't even bother," he said, "There's no way you'll be able to catch up. Those people have been playing that game for years." I don't react well to being told I can't or shouldn't do something. Nuts to you, sir!, I thought. I will throw myself at this game until one of us breaks.
So far it hasn't been too bad. I'm still in the practice league, so everyone else is pretty much just as much of a noob as me. And even once you get on the ladder you aren't going to be matched with someone completely out of your league from what I've heard. My win/loss ratio is about even right now, which think is pretty good for someone completely new to the RTS thing. I even won my very first online match. I've been saving almost all of my replays and I actually like watching my losses to figure out what I did wrong. But I've had a couple awesome wins so far. Fair warning, if you don't play Starcraft the following will probably be far less exciting for you than it is for me.
Awesome Win #1: First time a Zerg player had pulled out a Nydus Network on me and at first I was convinced I was going to lose. He popped a bunch of roaches and zerglings into my base pretty early and did some major damage to my economy before I realized what was going on. What saved me was that I managed to hide my expansion so I don't think he knew I had built a Stargate until it was too late, and the fact that he spent all his resources on harassing me with the Nydus worms meant he'd spent almost nothing on anti-air units. I ended up sacrificing my main and just throwing what I had left at his base to try and cripple his economy before he could wise up and start countering air units. It worked - I managed to pump out a bunch of Zealots and a couple more Void Rays before he found my expansion. After that, it was cake, and the moment where I switched from "Oh god, I'm going to die, might as well go out in a blaze of glory" to "holy crap I might actually win this" was an amazing feeling. The end count was absolutely no structures left standing on either side, and me with a handful of Zealots and Void Rays.
Awesome Win #2: This was an example of how one can make a horrible and stupid mistake but still adapt and pull a win out of it. Watching the replay, I made a lot of mistakes at the beginning. I missed my first pylon and wasted a Chronoboost because of that, and I built my first Gateway really late. But the kicker was when I decided to try a wall-off for the first time and building-blocked ALL my probes inside my base. Yes, that is correct, I locked myself into my own base. So, unless I destroyed an expensive building I would have no expansion, no proxy pylon, no nothing. Well, I decided to run with it, try some early aggression and possibly die horribly. Luckily I had a pylon outside my base, so I started warping in Stalkers a fast as I could and sent them to hang out under the cliff of my opponent's base while I got Blink. And I added a Stargate for good measure - for some people its "When behind, Dark Shrine" but for me apparently its "When you're losing the fray, go Void Ray." By the time Blink was done I had a decent number of Stalkers outside his base; so I blinked them all up the cliff and started tearing into his units. I held back the Void Ray at first until I saw a couple siege tanks and managed to warp in a few more Stalkers to clean up his Marines and ended up winning. So I didn't feel so stupid, but I did feel like sending him a chat that said something like "Hey dude, sorry I came at you so early, but I walled all my probes into my own base. Like a boss." Watching the replay was pretty enlightening - the only reason that had worked was pure luck. He'd built missile turrets on the opposite side of his base. If he'd spread out his turrets or if I'd picked the other side of his base to camp out at I would have been dead.
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