[Rubgish]

(Original post by Converse Rocker)
You guys got any tips to beat people who 'cheese'?

I'm currently downloading the starter edition and this idea of cheesing seems like a big deal to a lot of people; is it just about good scouting and then appropriate counters?

Basically yes. A 'cheesy' tactic is one that tends to rely on catching your opponent off-guard, and if you manage to defend the initial cheese then 9/10 times you'll win the game.

It will be frustrating getting cheesed, until you learn how to cope with them and what to expect/where to check. Try not to let it put you off

[Converse Rocker]

(Original post by Rubgish)
Basically yes. A 'cheesy' tactic is one that tends to rely on catching your opponent off-guard, and if you manage to defend the initial cheese then 9/10 times you'll win the game.

It will be frustrating getting cheesed, until you learn how to cope with them and what to expect/where to check. Try not to let it put you off

Okay, thanks.

At first I was thinking 'Will I enjoy Starcraft if people do this?', particularly since I heard it happens a lot in Bronze league. But then I realised how much annoying stuff is in the games I play regularly, and you just have to do your best to beat it.

If anything, 'cheesing' might help me learn to scout more effectively Also I was thinking I could play some guys with people from here and we can have a non-cheese initiative, provided I enjoy the game, which I reckon I will

Also, isn't Heart of the Swarm in the works right now? That might help balance out the game maybe? Cheers for the post mate.

[Rubgish]

(Original post by Converse Rocker)
Okay, thanks.

At first I was thinking 'Will I enjoy Starcraft if people do this?', particularly since I heard it happens a lot in Bronze league. But then I realised how much annoying stuff is in the games I play regularly, and you just have to do your best to beat it.

If anything, 'cheesing' might help me learn to scout more effectively Also I was thinking I could play some guys with people from here and we can have a non-cheese initiative, provided I enjoy the game, which I reckon I will

Also, isn't Heart of the Swarm in the works right now? That might help balance out the game maybe? Cheers for the post mate.

I'd be happy to play a few games after my exams are done, just don't be downhearted if you lose over and over again

Knowing blizzard, heart of the swarm is likely to throw the balance into oblivion for a couple of months. Not that it really makes a difference, the people at the top of the game are exceptionally talented individuals and will find any kind of little bias in the game, so its almost impossible for them to fine tune the game to perfection. The tactics and things they find out eventually filter down to lower skilled players and the game evolves like that.

[Iamtidal]

The game pretty balanced, apart from Protoss potentially being too strong vs T with their "deathball" (I am zerg btw), so you needn't worry about balance before HotS too much. Converse Rocker, if you add me Tidal.319 I can play sometime, maybe after my exams are finished though.

When starting out in Starcraft you should try each race for ~5 games and try and stick with the one you like the most.
Terran are the most aggressive-they need to be attacking or "dropping" lots, dropping is loading a small force into a medivac(healing plane) and dropping behind enemy lines.
Protoss are better and defending then moving out with a powerful army
Zerg have the weakest army units, so need to expand alot and rebuild their army quickly, to "swarm" the enemy.

[Architecture-er]

Eurgh I HATE PvP...

Not because I find the matchup bad, it's just you get so many dicks cannon-rushing and 4-gating... For every one you hold off, gloat over the failure of a player and then crush, you also lose one. Had 5 out of 6 matches as PvP tonight, which had 2 cannon-rushes and 2 4-gates.

Can't wait to fight myself clear of the ****heap that is bronze league.. Maybe then I can focus on playing the game instead of having to 24/7 patrol the entire ****ing map for cheese until around 6 minutes has passed.

[Converse Rocker]

(Original post by Iamtidal)
The game pretty balanced, apart from Protoss potentially being too strong vs T with their "deathball" (I am zerg btw), so you needn't worry about balance before HotS too much. Converse Rocker, if you add me Tidal.319 I can play sometime, maybe after my exams are finished though.

When starting out in Starcraft you should try each race for ~5 games and try and stick with the one you like the most.
Terran are the most aggressive-they need to be attacking or "dropping" lots, dropping is loading a small force into a medivac(healing plane) and dropping behind enemy lines.
Protoss are better and defending then moving out with a powerful army
Zerg have the weakest army units, so need to expand alot and rebuild their army quickly, to "swarm" the enemy.

Cheers for this mate. I'll start playing properly once the last few exams are out of the way.

[Architecture-er]

Anyone struggling with PvT should check out Day[9]'s Daily #468, it's incredibly good and has a real gem of a build in part 1. It works against other races as well, getting out the same number of units as a 4-gate does (with around 30 secs delay), but also pops out a nexus in the bargain!

Been trying it both defensively and offensively, and so far found it pretty nice, though I've not had to contend with holding off a 4-gate or another overly-aggressive 1-base yet. Will smash a terran fast expand if they've only got 1 bunker down. Can only see it holding against a 1-base attack if your natural is on the mid-ground, if your natural is ramp-less then you can't really hold it.

[lubus]

(Original post by Architecture-er)
Anyone struggling with PvT should check out Day[9]'s Daily #468, it's incredibly good and has a real gem of a build in part 1. It works against other races as well, getting out the same number of units as a 4-gate does (with around 30 secs delay), but also pops out a nexus in the bargain!

Been trying it both defensively and offensively, and so far found it pretty nice, though I've not had to contend with holding off a 4-gate or another overly-aggressive 1-base yet. Will smash a terran fast expand if they've only got 1 bunker down. Can only see it holding against a 1-base attack if your natural is on the mid-ground, if your natural is ramp-less then you can't really hold it.

is this huks 1 gate expand?

goes smth like 13 gate 17 core 20 nexus stalker stalker 2 gates robo? terrans that put only 1 buker down are always easy to crush

[ANARCHY__]

Yo, what's up. Do you guys still frequent this thread or will it be mainly down for a while (due to exams)?

[Rubgish]

I know I personally aren't playing till my exams are over, then i'll have terrible terrible ladder anxiety as a result of lack of practice and so will probably spend several hours a day with my house hovering over the find match button

[ANARCHY__]

(Original post by Rubgish)
I know I personally aren't playing till my exams are over, then i'll have terrible terrible ladder anxiety as a result of lack of practice and so will probably spend several hours a day with my house hovering over the find match button

Haha. Well, hopefully Blizzard will have released that patch which allows players to do practice matches against others so all is not lost, I hope.

Do any of you guy see any issues with balance/imbalance? I know it's talked about a lot in the community but I don't know how much of an issue it is in the lower leagues.

[Rubgish]

(Original post by ANARCHY__)
Haha. Well, hopefully Blizzard will have released that patch which allows players to do practice matches against others so all is not lost, I hope.

Do any of you guy see any issues with balance/imbalance? I know it's talked about a lot in the community but I don't know how much of an issue it is in the lower leagues.

In lower leagues, there is no issue with balance at all. And before everyone shouts at me saying X is blah and Y is blah blah, hear me out: When I say there is no issue with balance, I say it because at lower levels people claim so many different things are imbalanced, and it varies immensely from person to person. Now the reason this occurs, is because some play styles suit people better than others - say you are in gold league, you'll play some builds/game-types at a platinum level, yet other builds/styles you will only in silver in, now playing against a gold player whose does a build that forces you to go into this silver mode, you will lose 80% of the time. Then you call this imbalanced because even though they are the same apparent level as you (gold vs gold), the actual skill level for the builds played is not.

There isn't really a way to 'fix' this, because its not a problem with the game its an individual issue that effects any given player. Everyone can solve it individually by focusing on improving the parts of the game they are weakest at, but often people are extremely bad at analysing what they are doing wrong, which is where getting a better player to take a look at your games/play a few games with you is really helpful. If you are on EU, the channel SC2Improve is always a good place to find someone from bronze->masters to play against without the ladder pressure and who'll give you feedback on what they think you could have done better after the game.

At higher levels, peoples play doesn't have so many weakpoints of this kind, primarily because you'll have played every style of game so many hundreds of times that you can't help but have gotten better at it, so thats why balance discussion does make sense at the top level of the game, as these individual weaknesses are far less apparent than they are at a lower level.

[ANARCHY__]

(Original post by Rubgish)
In lower leagues, there is no issue with balance at all. And before everyone shouts at me saying X is blah and Y is blah blah, hear me out: When I say there is no issue with balance, I say it because at lower levels people claim so many different things are imbalanced, and it varies immensely from person to person. Now the reason this occurs, is because some play styles suit people better than others - say you are in gold league, you'll play some builds/game-types at a platinum level, yet other builds/styles you will only in silver in, now playing against a gold player whose does a build that forces you to go into this silver mode, you will lose 80% of the time. Then you call this imbalanced because even though they are the same apparent level as you (gold vs gold), the actual skill level for the builds played is not.

There isn't really a way to 'fix' this, because its not a problem with the game its an individual issue that effects any given player. Everyone can solve it individually by focusing on improving the parts of the game they are weakest at, but often people are extremely bad at analysing what they are doing wrong, which is where getting a better player to take a look at your games/play a few games with you is really helpful. If you are on EU, the channel SC2Improve is always a good place to find someone from bronze->masters to play against without the ladder pressure and who'll give you feedback on what they think you could have done better after the game.

At higher levels, peoples play doesn't have so many weakpoints of this kind, primarily because you'll have played every style of game so many hundreds of times that you can't help but have gotten better at it, so thats why balance discussion does make sense at the top level of the game, as these individual weaknesses are far less apparent than they are at a lower level.

I'm glad you gave me such a measured answer. I had a suspcion that in the lower leagues, balance issues where a pretty arcane thing to talk about. I can understand when IdrA complains about not being able to scout as effectively as a zerg against a walled off terran with marines but I am wary of saying that many bronze or even platinum league players will experience this issue.

I thought your point about play styles was quite interesing and I've not heard that point of view before. As a bronze league player, I have not come across it first hand and instead relying on a relatively fast APM to get a deathball (or early aggression) to kind of work my way through the game. I'm not really sure how I play the game per se. I know when I am building my extract, pool and hatch (I am a zerg player) but beyond that, I try and match it to what the opponent is doing.

Again, I think this sort of reactive play (especially for zerg) is where, at least a significant minority of balance complaints come from. Of course, I cannot be sure; I am only looking at this issue from the outside in. In my league, there is a lot of cheesing and slow use of tactic so it's hard for me to judge this first hand.

I do think each race has its own benefits and weaknesses but it does say something to me that Blizzard are still fixing balance issues and are hoping to continue at least up until Heart of the Swarm. That said, it could just be to reflect evolution in play tactics which I don't dispute but I think that, even at the developers level, there must some admission of some imbalance amongst race and perhaps also with maps.

[lubus]

(Original post by ANARCHY__)
I'm glad you gave me such a measured answer. I had a suspcion that in the lower leagues, balance issues where a pretty arcane thing to talk about. I can understand when IdrA complains about not being able to scout as effectively as a zerg against a walled off terran with marines but I am wary of saying that many bronze or even platinum league players will experience this issue.

I thought your point about play styles was quite interesing and I've not heard that point of view before. As a bronze league player, I have not come across it first hand and instead relying on a relatively fast APM to get a deathball (or early aggression) to kind of work my way through the game. I'm not really sure how I play the game per se. I know when I am building my extract, pool and hatch (I am a zerg player) but beyond that, I try and match it to what the opponent is doing.

Again, I think this sort of reactive play (especially for zerg) is where, at least a significant minority of balance complaints come from. Of course, I cannot be sure; I am only looking at this issue from the outside in. In my league, there is a lot of cheesing and slow use of tactic so it's hard for me to judge this first hand.

I do think each race has its own benefits and weaknesses but it does say something to me that Blizzard are still fixing balance issues and are hoping to continue at least up until Heart of the Swarm. That said, it could just be to reflect evolution in play tactics which I don't dispute but I think that, even at the developers level, there must some admission of some imbalance amongst race and perhaps also with maps.

Join the channel Bronze Practice, or Uk, or mixed fruit, there are always ppl looking for 1v1s

[Cressida]

A guy just added me on stream and wants to perform SC sexual roleplay ....


what even..

[Rubgish]

(Original post by ANARCHY__)
I'm glad you gave me such a measured answer. I had a suspcion that in the lower leagues, balance issues where a pretty arcane thing to talk about. I can understand when IdrA complains about not being able to scout as effectively as a zerg against a walled off terran with marines but I am wary of saying that many bronze or even platinum league players will experience this issue.

I thought your point about play styles was quite interesing and I've not heard that point of view before. As a bronze league player, I have not come across it first hand and instead relying on a relatively fast APM to get a deathball (or early aggression) to kind of work my way through the game. I'm not really sure how I play the game per se. I know when I am building my extract, pool and hatch (I am a zerg player) but beyond that, I try and match it to what the opponent is doing.

Again, I think this sort of reactive play (especially for zerg) is where, at least a significant minority of balance complaints come from. Of course, I cannot be sure; I am only looking at this issue from the outside in. In my league, there is a lot of cheesing and slow use of tactic so it's hard for me to judge this first hand.

I do think each race has its own benefits and weaknesses but it does say something to me that Blizzard are still fixing balance issues and are hoping to continue at least up until Heart of the Swarm. That said, it could just be to reflect evolution in play tactics which I don't dispute but I think that, even at the developers level, there must some admission of some imbalance amongst race and perhaps also with maps.

Its certainly true each race does have specific things its good at, terran is generally speaking better at harass than protoss, simple due to the fact terran always has medivacs and has cheap, high DPS (but low health((and more importantly 0 gas cost)) units they can use to inflict fast damage.

High APM is a good thing, it means you'll probably get better with practise quite quickly as you aren't going to hit any physical APM wall, try finding a build order and play that 10 times in a row, you'll see plently of improvement really fast. And its important to remember, it doesn't matter if you lose all 10 of those games, improvement is categorically not dependent on you winning the game you are practising in.

Also once my exams are done, i'll happily play a couple of games against you/spectate some 1v1's and see if I can find anything obvious you could improve on, sometimes its really hard to spot yourself what you need to do to get better, and often people pick up on the wrong thing (eg, lots of zergs blame themselves doing badly on things like poor creep spread or scouting, when really its the fact they keep supply blocking themselves or they miss too many injects).

(Original post by Cressida)
A guy just added me on stream and wants to perform SC sexual roleplay ....


what even..

Sounds like a keeper!

[ANARCHY__]

(Original post by Rubgish)
Its certainly true each race does have specific things its good at, terran is generally speaking better at harass than protoss, simple due to the fact terran always has medivacs and has cheap, high DPS (but low health((and more importantly 0 gas cost)) units they can use to inflict fast damage.

High APM is a good thing, it means you'll probably get better with practise quite quickly as you aren't going to hit any physical APM wall, try finding a build order and play that 10 times in a row, you'll see plently of improvement really fast. And its important to remember, it doesn't matter if you lose all 10 of those games, improvement is categorically not dependent on you winning the game you are practising in.

Also once my exams are done, i'll happily play a couple of games against you/spectate some 1v1's and see if I can find anything obvious you could improve on, sometimes its really hard to spot yourself what you need to do to get better, and often people pick up on the wrong thing (eg, lots of zergs blame themselves doing badly on things like poor creep spread or scouting, when really its the fact they keep supply blocking themselves or they miss too many injects).

Hey, thank you for your post. It was pretty informative. I have found it kind of annoying to deal with early marine aggression but with a couple of banelings and zerglings (and sometimes now, a cautionary spine crawler), they aren't usually a problem. Also, I am going with the Spanishwa method and producing at least 2 Queens per hatch to ward off any early air aggression and it's a nice way to keep medivacs at bay as well as simultaneously spawning creep tumours and larvae.

As for APM, it has helped but the majority of people I have played in Bronze league have very odd play methods. For example, I was playing a ZvP and all the guy did for about half an hour to forty minutes was spam cannons. When I realised that was all he had (yes, literally all he had), then I dropped in the back of his base and took him out. Admittedly, that's an extreme example but I've played a lot of people a lot of times who just don't really do anything.

Maybe it would be useful if we all posted up replays so that we can learn off each other? I'm fairly sure you can attach those files to posts.

Thank you very much for the offer of watching/playing me. I have to say, it's invaluable when people offer advice from a different perspective. I'll also be watching some pro games to learn how to improve my game and maybe we could post torunament links whenever we catch them to kind of watch it happening live (I kind of prefer that anyway). What exams are you taking by the way?

Thank you very much for your help so far!

(Original post by lubus)
Join the channel Bronze Practice, or Uk, or mixed fruit, there are always ppl looking for 1v1s

Hey thanks lubus. I'll definitely join in and see what I can learn from other people on the channel.

[Chumbaniya]

Anyone else going to go to the UK Nationals? Me and Rubgish will be going. Link is here: http://www.facebook.com/events/426617824027832/

[ANARCHY__]

(Original post by Chumbaniya)
Anyone else going to go to the UK Nationals? Me and Rubgish will be going. Link is here: http://www.facebook.com/events/426617824027832/

Looks pretty cool. BAFTA is a nice place.

[Chumbaniya]

(Original post by ANARCHY__)
Looks pretty cool. BAFTA is a nice place.

Capacity might become an issue though. There are already 380 attending, and that's assuming everyone on the list has only requested one ticket.