GuitarBizarre's Big Bad StarCraft Thread

[GuitarBizarre]

So here's the deal - I'm big on StarCraft. And now that I'm big on StarCraft, I think you guys should be too.

I got dragged in by the replay casts done by the LAGTV guys on youtube, from there I watched a little Day[9] and Husky, and decided that even though I normally HATE RTS games, this StarCraft thing was worth giving a try.

Here I am a few months later and I think I can now honestly describe StarCraft as a Hobby, rather than just some game I'm going to get bored of and throw away. Its fun, there's always a way to get better, the personalities are big and colourful and the community...well, its a community, so its full of nerds and morons and idiots but by and large those people are in the minority. The majority of people are just excited to be playing StarCraft and talking about it.

So What is This StarCraft Thing?

That one is easy, and difficult.

The easy part is that its a Real Time Strategy Game, with a strong single player component and a really competitive online multiplayer.

The single player takes place in the Koprulu sector of deep space and follows the conflict between 3 races, The Terrans (Humans), The Protoss (Psychic aliens), and The Zerg (A race of genetically engineered beasts)

The first game, Starcraft, dealt with a single player campaign where you played Terran. At the outset of the game, you're a Terran rebel group fighting against an oppressive government. That changes slightly when without warning, the fringe world of Chau Sara is suddenly burned to the ground by a race of aliens who identify themselves as the Protoss.

Conflict ensues as humanity fight the protoss to save their worlds. Over the course of the game you discover that the protoss aren't fighting humanity persay, they're burning colonies and planets that are infested by the Zerg.

The Zerg are, for the first game at least, the ultimate enemy. They were genetically engineered to consume all other species in the galaxy, absorbing their DNA and replicating it and mutating it to their own advantage. Through this process the Zerg intend on becoming a race of perfect beings. They're interested in absorbing humanity because of its latent psionic potential, which until then has been the principle weakness that has prevented the Zerg from killing and absorbing the Protoss.

The plots advance from there, and its way too long and way too involved to repeat here. What I've described is basically the first few missions of the first game. Subsequently, Blizzard released the expansion, StarCraft: Broodwar, and then, a decade later, Starcraft 2: Wings Of Liberty. Slated for future releases are two more expansions: StarCraft: Heart of the Swarm, and StarCraft: Legacy of the Void. These two expansions will focus on the Zerg and the Protoss, respectively. Wings Of Liberty has a terran focus. Each expansion takes place chronologically after the previous one, leading to a unified storyline and substantial plot development.


Multiplayer

Of course, for anyone who is really absorbed by the game, what I've said above is the minor part of the story. The fact is, the first StarCraft was a huge game. It was mindblowing how well it did, and this happened primarily on the back of its incredible multiplayer experience.

Prior to StarCraft, there weren't really any RTS games of note that experimented with using multiple, distinct races against each other in multiplayer. Largely RTS games would consist of armies with either the same units and different special weapons, or with different units that were functional replacements for each other, and were only really distinct visually.

StarCraft, with its 3 race system, changed that, and it led to a staggeringly deep and complex multiplayer game, where even now, ten years after its original release, the tournament scene is discovering new strategies and new ways of doing things that allow the best players to set themselves apart from their contemporaries.

The fact StarCraft made its multiplayer so good was great, but it coincided with a major development: Online gaming.

When StarCraft hit it really big was when Korea discovered the concept of the internet cafe. "PC bangs", as they're termed in Korea, are internet cafe's where people can come together and play games across a LAN with minimal fuss. Rather than being a singular activity undertaken in darkened bedrooms by nerds, Korea took StarCraft public. The competition aspect of the multiplayer spiralled, and tournaments were organised. The story of how starcraft became so big is largely a matter of a growing community from this base, so I'll skip the growth and just explain what StarCraft is today.

StarCraft today is big business. Korean progamers at the very top of broodwar have corporate sponsorships. Samsung maintains its own StarCraft Team (Samsung KHAN), and other team names such as CJ Entus and KT Rolster have become common parlance in everyday life for Koreans, even those who don't play StarCraft themselves. It was only a couple of weeks ago that MBCGame, a Korean Television network, ceased operations, after years of being a channel whose name was practically synonymous with StarCraft professional competition.

In Korea, its possible to turn on a TV and instantly find a StarCraft game at any time of day, being either played or replayed. Its that big. And this is just for the original game and its expansion, Broodwar. Broodwar professional competition is a bigger thing in Korea than you could possibly imagine.

As an example, this is a picture of Lee Jae-Dong winning 40 Million Korean Won, (£22,617 at todays exchange rates, or $35,600) with his hot girlfriend in shot and being treated like a god by the media.



This guy gets to hang around with booth babes, go out with models, and achieve celebrity status with thousands of fans for playing a game that looks like this:



Tres magnifique, eh nerds?

StarCraft 2
StarCraft 2, of course, is a different beast. Released a decade after Broodwar, its bigger, better, flashier, and most importantly, its the game anyone who isn't korean is playing.

Yes, I said "Isn't korean". The fact is, Korea made StarCraft big with Broodwar. Changing to a new game is a scary prospect. Imagine changing your national sport to Rugby instead of football and you get the idea. Korea still loves broodwar and thats not likely to change in the immediate future.

Of course, Korea is still big on StarCraft 2, more than half of all the copies of StarCraft 2 ever sold have been sold there. The Korean Global Star League (GSL) is the tournament of kings for StarCraft 2 players, and most of the top players are still Korean. In fact, this is such a trend that those in the community actually use the term "foreigner" to refer to anyone who isn't korean playing professional StarCraft.

But GitBiz, This All Sounds Rather Difficult...


And indeed it is...or at least, it is at the very high levels of play that the top players in the world set as a bar.

The fact is, StarCraft is very clever. It has a matchmaking system that measures your skill as you play, and puts you into leagues and into matches against players who are always close to your skill level. No matter how good or bad you are, the game intends to keep it interesting without making itself too difficult. The system intends to see you lose half of your matches, which of course means you're almost guaranteed to win half.

On top of that, learning to play StarCraft is actually very, very simple. The Singleplayer (remember that from way up above?) teaches you the basics in practically handholding fashion. You really don't need to be any good at anything to be able to play a game of StarCraft and have some fun with it, and the singleplayer is engaging and fun in its own right, I'd even go so far as to say fantastic.

On top of the fact that StarCraft is very simple to learn and very hard to master, you can find yourself very, very easily sucked into the world of StarCraft not by the game but by its community. I mentioned this very early on and its really big to me that these guys exist, so I'm going to list a few for you to check out. They're all great entertainers, and theres a great DIY vibe to the community. Even if you're not a pro, if you can talk over a replay and make it entertaining, you can be part of the community and you can be big.

Generally speaking, I think there are two best entries into the world of StarCraft as a SPECTATOR. (And if you're anything like me, it will swiftly follow that you want to play)


Day[9]
Day[9]TV



The first guys is perhaps Starcraft's biggest ambassador and largest figure, Sean "Day[9]" Plott. As a professional Broodwar player, he took home wins at the 2005 and 2007 World Cyber Games, and second place finishes at the 2004 and 2006 WCG USA tournaments.

Shortly after this, he actually switched from a pro gamer to an entertainer, with the Day[9] Daily. Once a day, 5 times a week, Day[9] takes replays of StarCraft games and commentates them in a live Streaming show, interacting with the audience as he goes. He has a natural talent for comedy and engaging, so its a great way to get started in appreciating StarCraft. He also does 2 really newbie friendly segments, the "Funday Monday" and "Newbie Tuesday". Newbie tuesday is when he casts low level games (Games by people like you and me, who aren't pro), and helps people to get better from the ground up.

The second segment, Funday Monday, is best described in Day9's own way.

"Welcome to the Day[9] Daily, where we learn to be a better gamer, except on mondays, where we dick around!"

What this means is that on monday, he sets a challenge for the week, for people to play games with an arbitrary, stupid restriction and Day[9] casts the resulting games in order to derive humour from the crazy games that happen as a result.

He's a natural talent, and you should watch more of him.

LifesAGlitchTV, AKA NovaWar and MaximusBlack
LifesAGlitchTV's Channel - YouTube



These guys come at StarCraft from the opposite background to Day[9], they're just two regular guys from Canada who enjoy StarCraft and decided that there was a niche that wasn't filled, a thing they wanted to see that didn't yet exist.

And so they made it happen. And people loved it so much that MaximusBlack is now on team CheckSix and is a professional StarCraft shoutcaster.

What they were looking for was a StarCraft show that didn't focus on high level play. A StarCraft show where the everyman, with his middling skill could have his games commentated for the humour of everyone.

What makes LAGTV special isn't really the concept, but the execution. NovaWar and MaximusBlack have been fast friends their whole lives but their humour never seems too "In Crowd", they're always just bringing you into their jokes and making you laugh along.

The crowning achievement for these guys is their continuing segment "When Cheese Fails" (Which has recently been renamed "Will Cheese Fail"), where they take replays of people trying cheesy, explotative, underhanded strategies, and laugh heartily when they fail, and when people manage to use creative escapes to their advantage. Alongside these games they also cast "Normal-Ass Normal Games" sent in by their fans, and they're rarely any less funny.

Teamliquid
Team Liquid - StarCraft 2 and Brood War Pro Gaming News



So, after all this, you're probably a little weary of reading, but bear with me one moment longer and let me finish with this. If you take nothing else from this whole post, let it be this section.

Teamliquid.net is the hub for all Non-Korean StarCraft, both Broodwar and StarCraft 2. The site is huge, its detailed, its updated daily, and they have their own Wiki, listing all professional StarCraft players from all countries. They list the streams that go on all over the internet at all times, they host discussion, they release editorials like a magazine and they are generally speaking without equal in terms of StarCraft news. Their forums also play host to a startlingly high number of professional Starcraft players. The biggest Foreign names in StarCraft are known to post there, if only on occasion. Greg "IdrA" Fields, Tyler "NonY" Wasieleski, Payam "TT1" Toghyan, Chris "HuK" Loranger, and a great number of others are all known to post there, right alongside you and me.

If there's anywhere on the internet that can show you how deep and worthwhile Starcraft is, its Teamliquid.net, if there's anybody who can show you how much fun StarCraft can be as a spectator, its LAGTV, and if there's anyone who can show you how much fun StarCraft can be as a player, its Day[9].

This has been a GuitarBizarre editorial, now go play some StarCraft

[mr dave]

It would be cool if the multiplayer aspect of SC2 actually used the bulk of the new content they introduced in the single player instead of just being a glorified version of the original MP game tweaked so that playing defensively is no longer a valid tactic and instead becomes all about aggressive action for the benefit of e-sport spectators.

[midnight rain]

^ That's what I've heard. I was a huge fan of the original Starcraft for many many years before SC2 came out, but still have yet to try the sequel. Zerg = WIN though.

I've also heard the races are pretty damn unbalanced, with Terran being ridiculously OP. Though this was when it first came out so it's possible they patched it.

[GuitarBizarre]

Neither of those things are true, really. The game is about taking expansions and whatnot.

Obviously in that context, the aim of the game is to acquire a larger army faster than your opponent, while striking a balance between the number of bases you have. Being too greedy leaves you with a smaller army, so you get rolled by people who build more units off of less bases. The reverse is also true. If you attack off of 2 base and someone on 3base gets a good battle, you can be really far behind thanks to his stronger production.

Its a lot more complex in practice of course, but its generally accepted that the aggression factor is more a byproduct of the way koreans use the tools they're given. The korean playstyle is significantly more attack based than most others.

Also, Terran aren't OP to an extent that anyone below masters league should care, if they're even OP at all, at any level up to Diamond league, its generally accepted that the race you play doesn't matter and your play has bigger leaks in it than race balance will fix. At diamond, people start seeing weaknesses in their own race more clearly, but those people frequently fail to compensate with strategy, instead whining about balance on teamliquid.

The game balance is constantly evolving, but at the end of the day, the best pros are taking games from all the races equally, so I'd say there aren't really any huge balance issues. There are some very, very minor ones that could possibly cause issues at GrandMasters level (top 2% of players, literally), but anyone below that level has bigger problems.

[Queen Boo]

Gb, when's the last time you had a date?

[Mrd00d]

I was always very impressed with Korea's gaming. And the idea of major league gaming. I think it's awesome that gaming is bigger than sports in Korea, and the gamers win huge amounts of money, and get the babes, etc.

I always wished MLG would take off here. I suck at Starcraft. I suck at RTS games. But if playing first person shooters became huge, I'd try to go for it. I get molly whopped a lot, but I'm probably in the top 20% for most FPS's I get into.

[mr dave]

Originally Posted by GuitarBizarre

Neither of those things are true, really. The game is about taking expansions and whatnot.

All depends on what you play.

In my experience trying the online side of things it's ALWAYS been about rushing. 100% aggression. That is it, that is all. At least up to Gold level. I don't think it has anything to do with Korean playstyle and everything to do with the rebalancing and redesign of the gameflow for a flashier spectator product. It's simply not possible to play a defensive style to any amount of success in the current game. If we played a match and I spent the first 7 minutes doing nothing but setting up a defense you would crush me with whatever offense you created in the same time. Blizzard made the choice in the way they designed the flow of the current game to reward aggressive play. It's like streamlining chess so that whoever is playing Black always loses unless White messes up horribly.

The races have become more balanced over time but that doesn't change the fact that one aspect of the product is designed and delivered in a way that it doesn't support the other side. That's a major faux pas by Blizzard in my eyes, though I'm also giving them the benefit of the doubt and their wacko 3 releases = 1 product distribution method. I'm hoping the final release of the game completely revamps the multiplayer or at least adds a new mode with a 'Classic' option for those who want to keep playing an e-sport.

@Tuna - don't deny yourself a good game because of petty bickering. It is still quite fun. The single player campaign is quite good and offers some pretty interesting twists on tailoring your available units and buildings. There are also lots of fun and free mods for multiplayer.

[GuitarBizarre]

Originally Posted by mr dave

All depends on what you play.

In my experience trying the online side of things it's ALWAYS been about rushing. 100% aggression. That is it, that is all.

Nah thats bull****. Protoss vs Zerg, the standard opening is defensive - Forge fast expand. Build a forge, a cannon, and a nexus in that order. the cannon stops zerg from rushing early and you can expand your economy before he can. Then you just have to build up your army faster than he does and go stomp him.

You can have that ****ed up for you if you tech to an army that his units are strong against of course, but Starcraft is absolutely not about all aggression, all the time. Obviously turtling is bad, but so is going for an all-in when you can't win. There's balance between the two.

[mr dave]

Originally Posted by GuitarBizarre

Obviously turtling is bad, but so is going for an all-in when you can't win. There's balance between the two.

See that's exactly my issue. Turtling was a valid and effective tactic in the original. If I chose to turtle against a player who chose to go full aggro we'd reach a stalemate. To me that's how balance works, 100% aggro vs. 100% defense should result in 0% victory within the match. In the new version 'some' defensive play is effective but being a predominantly defensive player is not.

[GuitarBizarre]

Originally Posted by mr dave

See that's exactly my issue. Turtling was a valid and effective tactic in the original. If I chose to turtle against a player who chose to go full aggro we'd reach a stalemate. To me that's how balance works, 100% aggro vs. 100% defense should result in 0% victory within the match. In the new version 'some' defensive play is effective but being a predominantly defensive player is not.

In a 1 base vs 1 base situation where neither player has a terrain advantage, thats exactly what happens.

But if you take 2 bases while your opponent turtles up on 1, you have twice as much money and can reinforce twice as fast, so you win, unless he stops you taking that extra base, or takes one of his own. Surely that makes exactly the same amount of sense?