The Devil's Playground

I have been playing a lot lately. In the last 10 days, I've gone from 0 to 100 wins as Zerg. I've earned a nice hydralisk portrait as well as a tiny bit of experience.

What I've been practicing more than anything is simply macroing. I know next to nothing about micro, I don't care too much about which units are good in which situations, I only want to hit my injects and get enough drones. I've still been able to win just about half of my games. I've found that I can win against most cheeses by just playing a fairly solid game, except the four gate which is really hard to deal with. There's a depressing amount of cheese in Bronze. I'm not saying that you run into it now and then, it's omnipresent. About half my games have been against Protoss, and I'd say that one in ten actually expands at some point. Other than that, it's all cannon rush, DT rush, four gate and mass void ray. It's gotten to the point where I groan every time the game loads up with a Protoss in it, and I actually don't know what to do when an expansion is thrown down.

I really don't understand the motivation behind cheese. I'm not saying it to try to be better than them or showing off, I sincerely don't understand it. What's the point? Starcraft is a brilliant, deep game, but these people want to simplify it to one single concept to get a quick win. Is it that important to win? I've asked some of the people who have cheesed me, not a lot of them have answered but it's mostly in the vein of "lololol u got owned" or "I just suck too much, I have to proxy". While I consider myself competitive, a win in itself in any game I play is not worth anything unless the game was good. I want some depth and involvement, and I want to feel that I'm getting better. I'm curious to hear more from cheese people, because I want ot understand what they get out of it. What exactly do you feel after a successful 6 pool? Is it just an adrenaline rush? Some Schadenfreude because you dominated your opponent?

I have cheesed once on the ladder though. I had a Protoss cannon rush my natural, and when I went for a counter-attack, void rays showed up and I had no anti-air. It devolved into a base race where his cannons in my natural were enough for him to win. Immediately after that game, in a freak coincidence, he was the opponent again. Of course he cannon rushed once more, but this time I counter-cheesed and built a hatchery in his base. I spine crawler rushed his starport while he tried to chrono boost his void ray. I couldn't believe that he did the exact same thing again, knowing that he was playing the same opponent. I guess he just thought that "This just can't lose! It's a motherfucking VOID RAY!" And yes, I got some satisfaction out if it, and it was pretty damn funny. So I guess that is one reason to cheese, for the chuckles.

I've been using Stephano's ZvP build from the Red Bull Battlegrounds to practice, both for ZvP and ZvT. Two quick expos, no gas, maximum drones. I like it for two reasons. One, it gives you a really strong economy if you can survive all the cheese, and two, you have to hit all your injects, otherwise it falls apart. Another thing I've kept in mind is something Day[9] always hammers into our heads - an overall plan. Something along the lines of "I want to go into the mid-game with a ton of roaches, and if I don't win then and there, I want to transition into infestors and brood lords". It can have deviations because of early pressure and so on, but I'm really trying to stick to my plan, to keep a goal in mind and to control the game so that I can do what I want. It has helped me tremendously. I'm not quite as overwhelmed when I have a plan. On the other hand, Zerg is designed to be a reactive race. There's not a lot of room for error and your scouting has to be top notch. I've lost a ton of games because I forgot to scout at key times and couldn't respond properly. The two seemingly contradictory concepts of sticking to a plan and reacting to your opponent actually help reinforce each other. You can react, for example by building anti-air against his banshees, but if all you do is react, you give up any control of the game. What I try to do is react appropriately and then, once I'm safe, return to the plan. On the flipside, I've been starting to feel like I can establish control in some games, as long as my macro isn't terrible, and I can force the opponent to change his plan. For example, I can harass with a few mutas and watch a Terran sink 1000 minerals into turrets instead of units, making him a lot more vulnerable to my mass roach attack that follows. This is of course just an ideal scenario that I'm happy when I hit, but mostly I'm scrambling to keep my bases from falling apart. There are larvae everywhere and Jesus Christ why are you guys not in gas???

ZvZ is completely different, and is quite frankly insane. You both have a ton of vision early on and you win or lose by inches. Everything is quick and dirty. I haven't had a lot of ZvZ games go longer than 6 or 7 minutes. I mostly try to react to my opponent, if it's an early pool, I try to win with a stronger economy, if it's a late pool, I try to win with overwhelming aggression. It's fun how easy Zergs are to read since it's the race I know the most about. I should probably play more Terran and start playing Protoss to learn more about how those races work. I think it would really help improve my ZvT and ZvP.

A Sinister Turn

I've switched to Zerg. It's what I've wanted to play all along, but I thought I'd learn basic Terran first. However, Zerg is so different, I felt I might as well just start from scratch with my race of choice. I thought I'd give you my noob view of Zerg.

While Zerg requires good play, in some ways I actually feel that the race is also more forgiving to new players. The reason is simple - Zerg production is very centralised. Everything happens at the hatchery. It's where units are produced, it's where you make workers, it's where you inject and where you check your larvae. There's also a ton of tech happening right there in the hatchery. As a Terran, if you want to quickly replenish your bio army, you need a million barracks with appropriate add-ons. As Zerg? Throw up a Roach Warren, get speed in that building and after that, just hit your injects and your hatchery will spew out roaches. It's also much easier to get vision of the map with a few well-placed overlords and highly mobile, cheap zerglings. It's especially a blessing against Protoss in Bronze, since you can almost always expect a proxy pylon somewhere. Everyone four gates. Everyone.

If you mess up as Zerg, you often have a decent backup plan. Forgot to make units while busy elsewhere? As long as you hit your injects, you have a party of larvae ready to be morphed - simultaneously - from one single building. Eat that, wimpy Terran reactors! Is he suddenly producing air units? As long as you got a single spire, you can get mutas quickly. Tech switches are quick because there's no need for unit-producing structures, just a few simple structures to enable the tech. Didn't hit your injects? Spend the energy spreading creep. Not ideal, but still somewhat of a recovery. Supply blocked with money piling up? You can throw down some spine or spore crawlers, freeing up supply and also adding defenses instead of just idly waiting for a new supply depot. I want to emphasise that it's not good play and that I'm working on simply not ending up in those situations, but still, it's nice to have a backup when I do.

On the other hand, Zerg is horrible for new players since you need to be very active. You can't really do a Terran turtle as a Zerg. You need map control and you need to scout as well as harass. This requires solid macro, a larger presence and view of the map, and most importantly, the ability to multitask and micro if you end up in tough spots. This is where I fall short. I can't really keep three bases running smoothly, I'll inevitably miss injects and creep spread, making myself poorer and less well defended. I have a hard time scouting and staying on top of the situation while still doing well at home. The instinct to turtle and keep the screen on the base is strong. This is why I really love Zerg, I've lost a ton of games and I know exactly why. I need to learn these things, and I think that Zerg is the perfect practice.

In Utter Darkness

I've been playing the guitar for 14 years now. I started when I was ten. Learning Starcraft has made me remember how I felt those first few months of playing the guitar. When you start playing an instrument, you can do it in one of two ways. The first way is simple, you learn exactly how to play Smoke on the Water or Für Elise by googling where you want your fingers to be and then simply copying those instructions. The other way is to mercilessly practice the basics. It's not fun and you don't get any quick or even semi-quick results. A guitarist has to learn each chord painfully slowly and spend endless hours trying and failing to hit the chords, then transitioning between them and coordinating the two hands. A pianist has to learn fingering by practicing until he or she wants to headbutt a wall, then concentrate on one hand at a time until both can do things on their own.

In the end, the Für Elise people will only know how to play Für Elise, and they can never transition out of it. They have no foundation. The people who learn the basics well become actual musicians, able to learn Für Elise in a fraction of the time it took the other person by applying those basics to that particular song. When I get cheesed in the bronze league, it makes me think of kids playing some simple melody over and over again while snickering at me trying desperately to just hit a G chord. But I want to learn how to macro, and I will spend the time it takes.

To continue the analogy, I want to tell you what it feels like to play the guitar once you actually know how to. A ton of stuff happens simultaneously in every single chord or tone. When you play a G chord, you have to put three fingers on the correct strings and frets, but you also have to put them down hard enough and in the right place, otherwise the string will be muted and no sound comes out. You also need to have your fingers in the correct angle so that they don't touch any other strings, because if they do, those strings will be muted. Your other hand then produces the sounds, either by hitting the right amount of strings in a sweeping motion, or by picking the strings one by one in some order. But when you know how to play the guitar, you don't actually think about these things. There is no individual control of the fingers, you just think "G" and the experience from years of practice automatically places your fingers in the right spots with the correct angles and force. If you've practiced finger-picking a lot, it also requires very little thought to control your other hand. Your fingers pick the strings almost automatically. There is also no "1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4" in your head to keep track of the rhythm. You just have a feeling for it, and that comes with experience.

When I play Starcraft, I'm completely overwhelmed. I have a basic idea of a build order and how I want it to end up, but this is what happens in my head:

"Ok, I'm making SCVs, making SCVs, should I build more marines? How much money do I have? Crap I need to put down more barracks OH SHIT I'm not making SCVs, gotta make SCVs, oh hey scouting probe, is there a proxy somewhere? Where did it go? Damn it, supply blocked! Oh shit I didn't take the gas gotta make some SCVs which hotkey did I use? Are you all in the control group? Noo, I haven't muled at all, shit should I scan? Why don't I have a factory? I should have one right about DAMN IT, SUPPLY BLOCKED AGAIN!"

When I play chords on the guitar, all I really need to do is think "G A Am Em" and a general idea of how I want the strings to be picked. Because my hands move by themselves, I can concentrate on other things, such as singing at the same time, or adding small flourishes to the chords or the melody in my own personal style. If I play a heavy metal solo, I break it down into pieces that I practice individually using various techniques I've learned, until each of the pieces becomes easy, then I put them all together. Being able to improvise takes a long, long time and you have to know the basics so well that you can play the guitar in your sleep. After 14 years of playing the guitar, if I hear a song and it's not too complicated, I can immediately play it myself. I can also make up songs in my head and then make those sounds with my guitar. But it's taken forever. I've spent thousands of hours playing to be that comfortable.

I'm not a Starcraft pro by any stretch of the imagination, but when I watch them, I think that I understand what goes on in their heads. It's certainly not "I'll make drones let's see 4 S D 4 S D check this expo check injects 4 S D 4 S D let me look at that keyboard how much do mutas cost?". It's impossible to do this with over 200 APM, you can't think that fast. A guitarist doesn't think "Fourth fret good angle hit e string with right hand, fifth fret good angle hard enough to make sound without right hand, seventh fret good angle hard enough", a simple hammer on technique that can produce three tones in a fraction of a second. The guitarist just thinks about the sounds and then it happens.

To learn how to macro, I think I know what I need to do. I need to hit those G chords, then those A chords. What this means is breaking down the game into parts. SCV production is one part that has to be constant. If it's not, everything else fails. So I practice just making SCVs. Then I add buildings. Then I add units. If I fail to make SCVs constantly because I'm concentrating on buildings, I know that I need to go down a step in complexity and concentrate on making SCVs again. My eyes need to go between the mini-map and the supplies in the top right. If they don't, if I'm too overwhelmed, I go down one step in complexity again. It's boring and it's frustrating, but I need to learn those basics until they just happen by themselves if I ever want to be good. So I'm just playing against the AI, practicing the basics over and over again.

I long for the day I can macro while doing fifty other things on the map, which in this analogy would be equal to singing while playing a complicated song on the guitar. And the only way to get there is to practice those basics over and over again.

Breakout

Yesterday, I had what I consider my first real win. I've been playing a few games with Pka, who has been really nice and helpful. He has played Zerg while I've been practicing my Terran. Usually, he beats me quite quickly with a good composition to match anything I build. I've read more about builds and macro, and in the last game we played yesterday, I figured out what my main problem was. I was trying to do way too much at once, and I don't have the macro to build banshees and harass, tech wildly, scout and respond to his units in an appropriate way.

I decided to throw all that out the window and just concentrate on getting a lot of stuff.

We played on Korthal Compound. I took my natural and built a few tech labs to get marauders, but other than that, I just walled myself in with bunkers and supply depots to concentrate on building more barracks and a few factories. I didn't even scout. Just building SCVs and getting more marines. I waited for him to attack, repelled his forces twice and then moved out with my big army of mainly marines, a few marauders and some medivacs. Everything except the medivacs died, but I managed to kill almost all of his zerglings, drones and banelings with stim and kiting, and I even took out his main hatchery and natural. At that point, I didn't worry about transitions or timing an expansion or responding appropriately to what I saw during my push. All I did was build more marines, and since I had a ridiculous amount of minerals, I scanned all his possible expansions. I threw up a third CC only when I was almost completely mined out.

I did one more big push with all my bio units after about 30 minutes. This was the longest a game had ever lasted for me, and as far as I could tell, I was way ahead in killed units but with a much worse economy since I didn't expand, and most likely far behind in tech. My factories pumped out a few tanks to protect my essential third expansion but he found it and killed almost all my SCVs while I was moving my main army out. I continued with my main army, attacked his weakest hatchery, killed a ton of stuff in my way and was only just repelled. With creep everywhere on the map except my home base and natural, almost no SCVs and both bases mined out, I just went all-in with about a dozen marines, six tanks, a few marauders and medivacs. I took down one hatchery with no real opposition, and all of a sudden he said "gg" and left.

I was stunned. I thought that this was a desperate last push before he overran me, but he had no units left to deal with my tanks. The game had lasted for 38 minutes, I had killed over 600 of his units while losing about 200. I had no idea that I was winning. But I felt so good afterwards. I was proud of myself for continuing to macro during my attacks, every time an army was taken out I had new marines at home. There were other obvious problems, at one point I had 2000 minerals for example. But despite all my errors, I managed to keep pushing and win in the end. I was exhausted, sweaty and shaking but completely overjoyed.

I'm watching these videos on Team Liquid now, made by the wonderful user Filter. They're really helping me a lot, and I'm practicing against the computer just to make a good basic build. Nothing fancy, just macro and timing. I've also begun a trial with European Fun Clan, a BF3 clan who has just expanded to Starcraft II. Being a single player gamer usually, I'm looking forward to getting to know these people. The clan leader MylilPwny has been awesome and really nice to me. But I guess that with a two year old running around the house, he is used to handling noobs :)

Outbreak

I just started playing my placement matches, still as Terran, after a few practice games against other novices. No matter how bad I was, the people I met were worse. I played against a Protoss who had a mothership and a few zealots at the ten minute mark - and nothing else. I decided to hop straight into placement matches against actual ladder players, and man, am I getting my ass kicked!

It's wonderful.

I've played four games and won one against another new player. The other three thoroughly crushed me. I saved the replays and watched them. It's obvious why I'm losing. They execute their build plans well, their macros slip less than mine, and most importantly, they can multitask. If I scout, I lose my macro. If I don't scout, I have no idea what to build. Before I started playing online, I watched a lot of games and read about builds on forums and wikis. I understand the basics of good builds - in theory. My last game was against the player Pka, who was nice enough to stay around afterwards to talk to me. Pka pointed out a few of my mistakes. I built my first SD at 9 food, not 10. I know that this is bad, but it slipped my mind in the game. I didn't expand. I thought that the Orbital Command requires gas since my newbie brain confused gas cost with build time, so I built a refinery first. I've done this in at least five games now. In the practice games, this didn't matter, I won anyway. But against real players, all my flaws become glaringly obvious.

That is why I love losing. You can't improve if you trick yourself into feeling "Gee, I sure am better than all these other players fresh off the campaign". Sure, it felt nice to crush some other newbies with my small theoretical knowledge from wikis and forums, but it didn't make me improve. Obviously I'm not arrogant enough to think that I know even the basics. But the things I've read are starting to make sense, and I think that the way to go is to simply keep playing, losing and watching replays until I have enough experience to transform what I've learned into actual practical knowledge.

Gates of Hell

It’s 2012 and I’m playing Starcraft for the first time. It’s been 14 years since the first game was released. I thought I’d take a moment before I write anything else and tell you why it took me this long.

I’ve been a gamer since I was a kid, but not a hardcore one. I was raised with a NES controller in my hand and kept playing console games until around 2000, when I got my first decent PC at age 13. I dabbled a bit in different genres, but I fell in love with two of them, RPGs and Grand strategy. I want to make the distinction between Grand and Real-time strategy clear. My favourite game of all time is Europa Universalis III, but it’s nothing like Starcraft. You play a country on an epic scale, making long term decisions with very little microing, you can pause whenever you want, think about your decisions for an eternity, and a game can last for 40 hours. The only RTS I’ve played was a little bit of Red Alert 2 in my early teens. Starcraft had always been something intriguing, but frightening. Even back in 2000, Starcraft felt like a vague mass of complexity that everyone else had years of experience with. Since then, that feeling has only grown. I hadn’t given the game a lot of thought, but now and then I’d thought about starting to play, but it just felt too much, too complicated. Too late.

Then Day[9] happened. I’m a big fan of Felicia Day, and I stumbled upon Day[9]‘s stream where he played Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning with her. Here was a guy just beaming with positive energy and joy, entertaining and captivating, I had to check out what he was doing. I actually started watching a few Day[9] dailies without understanding a thing. But it didn’t matter, I was pulled in by his joy. Then I watched his 100th daily and it almost made me cry. Instead of the vague scary mass I talked about earlier, Starcraft now had a face and a voice, and I couldn’t resist it. I know how happy good games make me, and I wanted to feel what he feels.

I bought Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty a week ago today. I’ve just completed the single player campaign on Normal, and I haven’t done anything else except a few challenges. I haven’t even gone online yet. There’s still so much to learn, and I will be writing about my learning techniques and approach to the game. I hope that it can inspire other newbies and be an entertaining read for veterans, watching me stumble and curse my way through the basics. I also hope that I can look back at this and laugh one day. I’m not trying to become a pro, I’m not even planning on becoming really good. I just want to learn as much as possible because it’s a challenge and a fun, complex game. Most of all, I want to feel the joy that Day[9] feels when he opens up a game.