The Competitive StarCraft 2 Megathread: GSL just keeps getting better

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Retro Games > The Competitive StarCraft 2 Megathread: GSL just keeps getting better

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Does anyone remember that funny little video where a dude fails to wall off against lings with a warping-in zealot, then draws on the screen "HOW IS NOT WALL??" and writes a screed to David Kim about Korean teens and adderall? I can't find it.

edit: nvm found it - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yojqcnB6lqw

Cicero fucked around with this message at 01:23 on Jan 2, 2019

# ¿ Jan 2, 2019 01:19

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 02:54

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

This is really cool, although it sounds like each agent is a bit of a one-trick pony: only one matchup supported (out of a possible 9), only one map, and it sounds like one preferred strategy. Particularly for that last bit, I'd be interested in seeing bo5 or bo7 games against the same agent to see if it can adapt to humans adapting to what it likes.

# ¿ Jan 24, 2019 20:33

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Furious Lobster posted:

Alphastar bad at harass lol

It's good at harass but bad at defending harass looks like

# ¿ Jan 24, 2019 21:17

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Yeah and just in general I agree with the commentators, can't remember if it was Rotti or Artosis who said it, but AlphaStar looks considerably stronger on attack than defense in general. It looks somewhat trickable.

# ¿ Jan 24, 2019 21:28

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

If you wanna jump straight to the games:

First pro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUTMhmVh1qs&t=2660s

Second pro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUTMhmVh1qs&t=5558s

Live exhibition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUTMhmVh1qs&t=9067s

# ¿ Jan 24, 2019 23:41

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

VelociBacon posted:

I thought the whole point of this was to make as good an AI as possible.

Not really. Like, making an unbeatable AI in a fighting game or FPS is super easy: just have them do the perfect counter just in time or headshot every time. Bam, AI that's "better than the pros" for every possible situation.

But that's obviously not interesting, computers doing basic computer actions faster and with more precision than humans is expected and boring. And if the AI is mainly winning because it pairs 'okay' level strategy with absurdly strong mechanics, that's...well it's an improvement on the generally terrible strategy and decisionmaking of past bots, but it doesn't mean your computer is pro-level at strategy and tactics, which is the thing they're trying to make AI good at. The whole point of DeepMind is figuring out the strategy and tactics type of stuff, not being able to click super fast.

The ideal here is micro that's at roughly the same level of the humans they're facing, that way if they win you know it's because of superior tactics and strategy, rather than brute force. Sure, we admire humans with really good micro, and we do so the same way we admire humans who run super fast, but that doesn't mean we're impressed by a car going five times faster.

# ¿ Jan 25, 2019 21:28

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

The AHGL (Day9's inter-corporate gaming league) is dead, but it already has a spiritual successor: the Corporate eSports Association! Organized mostly by people who had volunteered in the AHGL. Games this season are Rocket League, Starcraft 2, Dota 2, League of Legends, CS:GO, Rainbow 6 Siege, PUBG, and Magic the Gathering: Arena.

I'd link to a website but they haven't revealed it yet! Team registration opens Feb 1!

# ¿ Jan 30, 2019 20:05

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

I've felt like that recently in some of my ladder games. Keep loving up but thankfully my opponent fucks up harder

# ¿ Jan 31, 2019 22:50

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Anyone else playing in AHGL successor Corporate Esports Association this upcoming season? I already found one other zeezer at Google who's in.

# ¿ Feb 20, 2019 18:52

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Homers BBBq posted:

Do you think this is the case? Or is it possible Maynarde just thinks it's the style that's best for him because other people have been successful with it? Because incontrol doesn't seem to listen if he's getting any direction and he cast the finals. Sidenote, there were multiple times when incontrol made fun of other casters mid-game that were pretty funny. There was an open bracket PvZ where the Protoss went mass phoenix and only had like 2 zealots and a sentry in his wall so the Z just made a ton of queens and then made a nydus in their base. Incontrol was like "and here is why the phoenix alone is a bad unit, and if you want to see more phoenix you should check out Rotterdam's stream, he builds lots of phoenix" then he started impersonating Rotti defending his phoenix builds as the Protoss main is getting wrecked and he is GGing out of the game. A different game, a group of phoenix flew too close to some hydra and incontrol was "and the phoenix die to the hydra and if you want to see more phoenix die, you should check out rotterdam's stream." I enjoy incontrol.

Outside of serral-soo match, I found the group stage and some of the open bracket to be more exciting than final bracket but overall good tournament.

Is there a disproportionate number of protoss players as casters? Rotti, Incontrol, Feardragon, Tasteless, Artosis.

# ¿ Mar 8, 2019 20:12

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

JIZZ DENOUEMENT posted:

I love how seemingly super tiny changes have enormous impacts. Also yikes at 36% but also yikes at 63%

People didn't joke about "Korean Terran" being a separate race for no reason. There really does seem to be a huge difference between Korean Terran pros vs Foreign Terran pros in aggregate.

# ¿ Mar 18, 2019 16:23

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

JIZZ DENOUEMENT posted:

Yeah but even still, ZvZ is a billion times better than it was in previous expansions

PvP seems better too. I still think I like watching it the least of the mirrors (and I like playing it the least compared to PvT/PvZ), but it's better than it was. Wish there was a tier-3 comp to aim for other than CIA though.

# ¿ Apr 9, 2019 13:17

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Mata posted:

I wouldn't hatch/cc/nex first in silver. If you're losing to rushes and cheese, maybe it's worth to tighten your early game defense and open pool until you start losing to economic builds.

Agreed. You want to do safer openings early on, pool first + plenty of scouting, you can still work on macro even with those (and if you're in silver I guarantee your macro is still really bad).

Gunder post reps and people will tell you what you're doing wrong.

JIZZ DENOUEMENT posted:

PvP needs some slight tweak so that macro games can have something besides Zealot/Immortal/Archon for the late game combo. There needs to be something to create a dance like late game PvT. But I'm not sure what you could change.

Agreed, having a One True Composition is really annoying, and it's not even one that's interesting to control. I don't like going for it but there's not much else you can do right now. Maybe they could redesign void rays to be good against that comp, since right now voids are hardly used and everyone seems to agree they're an awkward unit.

# ¿ Apr 23, 2019 15:14

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Easily the worst designed unit in the protoss arsenal is the void ray. What the gently caress is it even for? It's used occasionally for proxy cheese with batteries, or sometimes as a panic unit to hold early roach all-ins if you opened stargate. That's about it.

Samopsa posted:

They're excellent for harassing well into the endgame, because they can invuln shade into worker lines and two-shot workers. 2 adepts with upgrades roughly kill a worker per second, which can be huge.

I think this is less useful than it sounds. In practice just using speed prisms to warp in chargelots if you're poor and dts if you're rich is better because they don't really need much micro and you can go back to macroing or controlling your main army.

# ¿ May 2, 2019 13:45

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Beautiful: https://www.dropbox.com/s/7vawjcq2f7n4qh4/Meme_SerralEU.mp4?dl=0

# ¿ Jun 25, 2019 22:13

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

If you see on the WCS stream an awkward white/Asian dude with long hair in the front row, that's me. Hi Mom!

Audience here got so loving hyped for Hellraiser, was really awesome to see.

# ¿ Jul 13, 2019 14:11

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Super stoked for Neeb vs Serral! C'mon One Punch Man!

# ¿ Jul 14, 2019 16:38

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Zwabu posted:

Protoss player gets a big economic advantage off early game and then promptly dies to a two base Terran army push by getting too greedy.

I feel personally attacked

Like seriously that happens to me so goddamn often.

# ¿ Jul 15, 2019 07:41

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

That g2 Parting vs TY was freaking excellent. One of the best PvT's I've ever seen, easy.

Re:infested terrans, I don't really see the problem. They're about twice as strong, except for health, but cost twice the energy so zerg can only make half as many. They should be more vulnerable to storm now since both the units and eggs are still under 80 hp.

# ¿ Oct 5, 2019 12:11

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

At least they're doing something about it, to me the more depressing thing is they've said nothing about PvP's ridiculously restrictive meta. Sure, there's plenty of different openers, but once you hit mid-game you have no choice but to make the One True Composition. It's ridiculous compared to TvT or ZvZ. There really needs to be something that counters immortals and archons reasonably well.

# ¿ Oct 5, 2019 23:40

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Maybe given infested terran casting like a 3 or 4 second cooldown, and make them a bit fatter? The biggest problem with infested terrans is that they scale too well with lots of infestors and energy. It's like the opposite of templar where the first handful are very useful for storm but having lots really isn't, and having full energy isn't that huge of an advantage over having 75.

# ¿ Oct 7, 2019 21:33

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Finally got back into masters MMR after 6 years out of it and there's a ladder lock. Fuckkkkk

Zwabu posted:

Is there any reasonable approach for someone who only enjoys one or two of the 3 matchups for laddering? Is it to choose some cheese or two base timing for the hated matchups to just grind through those games and at least get some wins?

Yeah just pick some stupid coinflip cheese. I offraced as zerg a while back and doing the 15 hatch speedling flood made for a lot of easy zvz wins. I think it was my highest % win rate: https://sc2swarm.com/index.php/2017/12/01/15-hatch-mass-speedling-all-in-defense-zvz/

Killing tosses with 3:22 nydus was also pretty easy, never found anything as simple and effective for ZvT though.

edit: also after you kill someone with that cheese, wait a minute to start the ladder search so you don't get them again

# ¿ Nov 24, 2019 23:45

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Zwabu posted:

I think the main thing with knowing flashcard type stuff like how much everything costs, build times and research times etc. is if you enjoy knowing stuff like that it will help, or at least you enjoy it.

I watch Vibe's ongoing B2GM series intermittently and I'm always a bit surprised the detail which he knows stuff like Broodlord build times or whatever, the range of everything etc. I suppose if you make your living playing a game even if it's not in tournaments anymore it helps to know stuff like that.

I suppose those numbers come into play if you want to know why a sentry immortal timing hits at exactly X minutes so you know how the prism build time and transit time factors into it etc.

Range is actually one of the ones that is in fact fairly important to know imo, plus it's easier since they're basically all small integers.

# ¿ Jan 13, 2020 14:49

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

drepimetheus posted:

I don't think I've said this, but I'm not really trying to improve. I am trying to understand the game better, but I'm the guy that laughs watching his 0/0 lings go up a ramp into siegetanks and hellbats. Not to make this my Goon Doctor thread, but I've got an essential tremor and I get ladder anxiety to the point that I've played perhaps 4,000 games against the AI, but I've only played 1v1 ladder maybe 3 times. You don't play very well when you're emotionally tilted before even hitting "queue".

Are you tilted even when playing unranked 1v1 ladder? I find not seeing my points go up and down makes things easier (I play ranked too, but when I'm not feeling super confident I usually go for unranked).

# ¿ Jan 14, 2020 13:41

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

JIZZ DENOUEMENT posted:

I love Starcraft

Same.

New CEA season starting up. Once more unto the breach, boys!

# ¿ Jan 17, 2020 17:27

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

When I was doing immo+chargelot all-ins vs zerg, the good players would make a shitton of roaches and when I'd push they'd retreat into their own mineral lines where I couldn't effectively get surface area.

# ¿ Feb 24, 2020 18:37

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Proxy nexus into dt's was amazing but sadly it'll never work again, at least at that level. Maybe give it a year or two and you'll be able to do it on ladder (less time needed the lower level you are).

# ¿ Apr 23, 2020 22:01

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Mata posted:

I got AoE4 expecting not to like it (because I didn't particularly like 1, 2, 3) but it actually owns pretty hard. There's not a lot of games to choose from in this genre so if you like trad RTS then you should really check it out while it's still 1$ on xbox game pass.

Speaking of other games, Immortal is doing a pre alpha stress test next weekend for kickstarter backers. That's the RTS being made by former SC2 modders, including Jakatak (TheCore) and I think some Starbow people.

Though it's not as BW-esque as I'd expect from Starbow peeps, just looking at some gameplay. The focus and flow look like they're in between Warcraft 3 and StarCraft.

# ¿ Nov 12, 2021 20:54

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Herstory Begins Now posted:

Beasty is moving on from SC2, which sucks, but good for him.

Apparently his dad died recently and he streamed AOE4 for a bit while processing that. Then he started getting 5x more viewers streaming AOE4, so I guess the switch is permanent. Happy for him, but that's a big loss for the small world of sc2 content creators

No game lasts forever, I suppose. I just wish SC2 was being meaningfully supported still, or there was a successor in the works (doesn�t have to be by Blizzard, in fact probably better if it�s not). Hopeful for whatever Frost Giant is making I guess.

# ¿ Dec 9, 2021 09:15

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

There's a playtest open now on Steam for an EXTREMELY blatant Starcraft clone here if anyone's interested: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1582500/Purple_War/

# ¿ Apr 27, 2022 07:10

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

The graphics look like Warcraft 3 but the gameplay is straight StarCraft. I mean there are some surface similarities in units to War3 like dryads and hippogryph riders, but the mechanics are very much StarCraft.

The TTK seems insanely low too, stuff seems to die even faster than SC2.

# ¿ Apr 27, 2022 08:42

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

laxbro posted:

Yea in general I think it is much more fun to watch T2 units duke it out in fast paced matches instead of watching one or both players turtle to T3 and then see who can be more cost-efficient over 40 minutes. The recent patch did a really good job of giving ZvP a refresh.

edit: Frost Giant teaser:

https://twitter.com/Frost_Giant/status/1534411072601399296

But wait, there's more!

https://twitter.com/Frost_Giant/status/1534695859018813441

# ¿ Jun 9, 2022 05:46

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Graphically, so far it looks like if you crossed StarCraft 2 with Warcraft 3.

# ¿ Jun 9, 2022 20:57

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Personally I haven't run into the "oh no one player got eliminated early" issue very often at all. And with most mains being shared, it's hard to see how it would happen often, really. Of course, this assumes decent team coordination, that your teammates are willing to defend your part of the main, for random teams maybe less true.

It seems like you could solve it by just letting players gift workers to someone who has few/no workers currently (they would faction switch upon gifting of course). That plus resource sharing and control sharing means that nobody is ever really out of the game.

# ¿ Jun 14, 2022 20:09

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Anyone else at Dreamhack Atlanta?

# ¿ Nov 18, 2022 21:52

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

PlesantDilemma posted:

Wish I was! How is the experience there?

Fuckin dope, tons of energy and hype here

# ¿ Nov 20, 2022 19:09

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

The finals was really rad! What a fantastic series, so scrappy. It's hilarious to me how herO literally cannot stop himself from attacking near-constantly even when it's a terrible idea and he should just sit back and macro.

# ¿ Nov 22, 2022 20:26

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

New PTR patch notes: https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/starcraft2/23891308/starcraft-ii-5-0-11-ptr-patch-notes

Mostly look okay.

# ¿ Dec 8, 2022 09:21

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Videos I watched indicated that ultras can fit between geysers and mineral patches some of the time now. And two on main ramps.

They appear to be slightly better vs marines and substantially better vs zealots (harder to get that melee surface area).

# ¿ Dec 10, 2022 08:36

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 02:54

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Frost Giant just announced that they'll start closed external pre-alpha testing for Stormgate in July, it'll be under NDA but they said they'll at least show off gameplay before that starts: https://www.reddit.com/r/Stormgate/comments/13jroe1/stormgate_closed_testing_update/

# ¿ May 17, 2023 18:39

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Retro Games > The Competitive StarCraft 2 Megathread: GSL just keeps getting better