Ok, I've been getting squished game in and game out the last two days against all-in one base play on the ladder. It's understandable since many players want to climb the ladder asap, but will Blizzard please release some bigger maps! I'm so sick of this. I don't know what it's like for the other races, but as a zerg player it leaves me playing really boring and uninteresting game. Apparently I need to fix my scouting tactics, but I'm really getting sick of short games where your opponent has no back up plan while zerg has to gear up on two base with their best defensive contingency plan. I vouch for bigger maps. Any advice on how to better scout one base play and defend it is also appreciated a whole whole bunch since I know a big part of the problem has to do with how I've been playing lately... Woof.
Yeah, I find this annoying too... After getting 6pooled 3 times in a row(and crushing all 3 of them), I was starting worrying whether I'm gonna play a proper game anytime... I don't really have problem beating all-ins since I tend to scout early enough(usually at 9 with the pylon probe), but seriously, it's not a tournament where money is on stake and winning matters... Just play the freaking game! As a sidenote, I once tried to try a 4gate early push against some guy in blistering sands and when he saw the push coming he started swearing at me stuff like "all of you *insert string of swearwords* scrubs going all-in and not even trying to play a macro game!"... The poor guy had a similar series of all-ins in the past few games too, as he told me after the match... I told him that it was like the first time I all-ined and that I had stopped committing as I had even made an expo by the time I entered his base, but I already had a large enough army and he quit As for maps, I totally agree with you: I'd really love to see a few more maps, but in different styles like for example Dire Straights or other ICCUP maps with mechanics like bridges, islands, mineral-only expos and other stuff... Maps are a huge part of strategy games, and having a good variety is quite awesome...
When you play Starcraft, the point is to win, people will do whatever is effective, whatever is popular or the most powerful at the current time. If you play by directly countering whatever your having trouble with it will help you a lot. After that, you take aspects from that and put it in to your standard. So personally I have troubles with Protoss 1 base timing pushes, I used to do 1 rax FE. This tended to lose to proxy stargate pushes, also immortals. So I instead kept the idea of a fast expand, I wen't 2 rax mm, with a ghost. (Very key if you scout robo or mass sentry). And got a planetary fortress instead, my economy might not be as good with double orbital, but I would rather live through a timing push and go on to win it, rather then getting lucky hoping he won't push me. That honestly wasn't to good of an example but just try to counter what is the most common in your games, instead of trying to play super standard. I see you play Zerg, I recommend fast hydras with roaches, on 2 base it can even kill collosus when sniped. Also, positioning is important against Protoss. If you see him moving out, intercept him and surround his force instead of waiting for him to get to a choke. Also, if it makes you feel better, every race has issues with 1 base all ins, this game is really effective for 1 base play, but it's the people who can squeeze in an expansion and survive the push who win and are above everyone else.
Ah, yes yes. Doing much better now. I haven't played ladder games in more than two months and all the custom games don't prepare you for all-ins since they're usually with diamond players who don't go for the lame sauce. I was actually overplaying against the all-in and it was dropping my drone count too low to keep up a force against them after the first push or two. Crisis averted and I'm feeling a whole lot better. Things turned back my direction after I stopped adapting so much to their early cheese and just kept up with my build order to get the drone saturation higher. Seem counter intuitive, but sometimes I feel like it's easier to fall into the lull of playing at somebody else's level by mistake. Hooray hooray, the witch is dead!
Sniper64, I kinda disagree with winning being the point of the game. If in a shoot'em'up there was a weapon that did 23453459873 AOE damage in a huge radious with no friendly fire, winning would be easy, but it would have no real point. Starcraft has deep strategic elements in it and by playing you can improve your reaction time, strategial thinking, multi-tasking etc. Doing the same thing over and over again just to go up a ladder is pointless, won't improve you as a player and is completely uninterresting. I've tried 4gateting a couple of times and cannon rush 1 time. I'm pretty confident that with a combination of the 2 I can easily hit diamond in a matter of 2-3 weeks if I'm done with my exams. I don't believe that it's got any point though. It's repetitive, teaches the player very little stuff(mostly improves control by a bit and not much else) and gives no real pleasure of achievment that a well-executed strategy or response to a strategy does. Playing on a tournament however has only one aim and that is to win, cause there's fame and money at stake. Especially the latter. Winning on a friendly match is just a good aim to have, to play as best as you can and have both sides learn something in the process, but playing friendly matches(such as ladder too since there's no real competition there) just to win by any means is just vanity...
I think you're exactly right, there's plenty of games that are exploitive and SC2 shouldn't be easily lumped into the same category. For the most part, it isn't, but people who can get into the diamond ranks based on smaller maps and strong cheese don't merit the rank that diamond should. By increasing the map size we can get into stronger strategic games and less early game all-in pressure. I guess I'm not saying early game all-in isn't strategic, but it's not allowing us to play with all the goodies contained in the game as often as I'd like. I'd love to start seeing strategies where zerg players can better utilize some of the lesser used options (like nydus worms and drops). Granted there are some places for those already, but by increasing the map size they can be reinvented. Right now I feel like my own games are being either played on one end of the extreme or the other. That is to say either a macro game or a defensive game against all-ins. I'm ready to see something orchestrated to begin compelling us to use the less frequented abilities and units of sc2 and my hunch is telling designing some new maps would compliment that. The larger the map size the more time we have to create ideas during the course of the match. Of course, some baller out there might reinvent the wheel and start showing us some new strats that can already exist with what we got, but for now I'm ready for some changes. Still love the game though.
I don't think that we need to take rushes and 1base all-ins out of the game, they can be scouted and countered. I just think it's stupid to do all-ins and 1base your way to diamond just to "win the race". Overlapping the game's depth just to win on a meaningless fight kills the game, and that's what I don't like. Imagine for example an MMO-RPG where every class has 1 ability that kills an enemy in 1 shot, instant cast with 1hour cooldown. What's the point of duelling once per hour just to take that kill and up your win ratio and not duel during the downtime? If money was on stake, then yeah, go ahead and use that uberskill and wait for a whole hour for the next one, since it's in your RL interrest to do so, but killing the whole game experience just for a ratio or rating or ladder place is just stupid... Also we need not only larger maps, but more unique maps, with different stuff in them like islands etc...
Yeah, by no means do I want one base play out of the game either, it's just that I feel like most maps aren't setup in a way to offer as many variations that could exist with some smaller adjustments. But now I'm repeating myself and I'm hungry. MONGOLIAN FOOD!!! I also find it somewhat funny a player can win by knowing a strong opening to use. It's really hilarious if you block it and they have no plan b. It's like going from hero to zero in .5 seconds.
I hate how some players think they should not be attacked for 20 minutes like some old brood war. Basically in Starcraft, there are no rules. If you want to probe rush, you can, you just have to remember you are sacrificing your economy if you do an early rush. If it is fended off, you opponent will be ahead
