Moved to schlaghund.com!

Hey everyone, I’ve got a very important announcement to make.  My wife finally convinced me to secure my own domain and host my blog myself.  So I’m movin’!  schlaghund.wordpress.com will be updated no more.  I’m going to leave everything that I wrote on WordPress as it is now, but from this point forward, you can find me at the new schlaghund’s playground at:

www.schlaghund.com

The site is still a work in progress, but despite the construction work, I do plan to start writing for it immediately.  Visit it now!  Bookmark!  Update your aggregators!

Playing to win: Starcraft II, addendum

This is an addendum to the recent series detailing the casual player’s journey into competitive multiplayer real-time strategy in Starcraft II.  Previous posts here: 1, 2, 3, 4

Success!  As of this writing, I’m officially a member of the 1v1 gold league!  Actually, I got into Gold League several days ago and have just been too busy (and a bit sick) to post my update.  After being again denied a promotion after my 100th win, I was almost ready to just give up all hope in the league placement system, but one win later, I got the promotion I was waiting for.  I decided to play one more game as a christening of my new league placement.  In it, I soundly secured a solid victory in a ZvZ mirror on Lost Temple against another Gold player.  Yep.  I’m finally where I should be.  I’ve achieved the goal that I originally set out for myself.  My journey… is complete.

This isn’t to say that I won’t be playing Starcraft II anymore.  My experiences have culminated in my eventually finding enjoyment in competitive multiplayer RTS.  So I actually like playing online now.  There are still a lot of things I want to learn and want to try.  I also still have friends that need me to help with their team league games, too.  But I’ll definitely be scaling back my play time.  It’s time that I started moving onto some other, newer gaming experiences (or older ones that I had put on hold).  Aside from the occasional iPhone game, I haven’t actually played anything else other than Starcraft II since its release.  That might be fine for those of you with aspirations of going pro and joining tournaments, but my fickle soul is restless, and it’s starting to feel the fatigue of “one-base play”, so to speak.

I decided a while ago that I wanted to end my series on the journey into Starcraft II multiplayer by examining for a little bit of how the competitive experience compares to my other favorite competitive gaming genre – fighting games.

When I first decided to pour some significant effort into getting better at RTS, I expected to find a lot of overlap between certain aspects in fighting games and the skills I’d need in RTS.  In hindsight, that expectation was pretty ridiculous.  They’re entirely different types of games, but now that I’ve spent a good amount of time playing both, I feel that I can adequately compare the two, if only to pinpoint the emphases of each genre for those that wish to become more involved with competitive gaming.

As I got proficient in Soul Calibur II against the guys in my dorm during college, I immediately found the appeal of fighting games: they were very much about playing the mind of your opponent – by reading him, baiting him, psyching him out, and just generally being one step ahead of his thoughts.  If you can get into the mind of your opponent, there’s nothing he can really do.  These impressions were only affirmed as I learned how higher-level Virtua Fighter was played, and especially later, when I began playing Street Fighter IV.

RTS, however, seems more of a battle of wills.  I don’t really know how to put it any other way.  I think that the distinction is best seen by examining the idea of advantage.  In a fighting game, the player’s life bar is the measure of victory.  However, the life bar rarely plays a role in what one is actually doing in the game.  A solid playstyle does not somehow become weaker just because the person executing it has less life.  There are some situations in which it matters (especially in games that have chip damage mechanics), but for the most part, the meat of the game lies in those small bursts of decision-making, where the two players are trying to determine what the other is going to do.  When one player succeeds in such an exchange, he gets his combo damage, and then another such exchange occurs (with either a complete reset, a frame advantage/disadvantage situation, or a wakeup game).  But the important thing to note is that in each exchange, any player can come out ahead with a correct guess.  This is why fighting games culminate in a battle of minds.  If you know what your opponent is going to do, no matter what their advantage is on paper, you can usually win, even after the opponent has depleted all but a sliver of your life.  This is also why fighting game matches can be so exciting.  The potential for a “losing” player to make a comeback is enormous.

In contrast, the traditional RTS model (and that of a lot of strategy gaming in general) consists of a slippery slope, where the slightest economic lead can be exploited to become an even larger lead, until victory is secured.  Some strategically-minded boardgames are starting to adopt mechanics in which disadvantaged players get artificially imposed advantages as a way of leveling the playing field and making the entire game more exciting.  For example, in Power Grid, players take their turn orders in such a way that the losing player gets the advantage for the turn.  If the rules were not engineered in this way, the slippery slope problem could easily cause one player to race way ahead of the other players in the game, giving little incentive to the other players to continue playing after a certain point.  In Starcraft II, if you can weaken a player’s economy just a slight amount, you can exploit that disadvantage to expand and get an even better economy.  Or you can commence a full frontal attack while their capacity to reinforce is diminished.  Or you can harass their economy even more while it becomes increasingly difficult for them to defend.  The disadvantaged player’s only hope against an adept opponent is to do some sort of push to reduce the other player’s advantage.  Day[9] talked about this in a TvT daily about maintaining advantage.  This property alone makes RTS gameplay a lot more methodical and, to some extent, predictable.

But the important thing that separates RTS from, say, a strategic board game, is, of course, the real-time element.  This adds that layer of execution that allows a player to improve, essentially, by an infinite amount.  One can become better just by simply doing more things than the other player.  This is important because the slippery slope effect does not really account for any element of execution.  When execution starts playing a role, then a disadvantaged player can simply try harder to catch up.  Now this isn’t to say that every situation is winnable.  There comes a point where, no matter how hard you try, you’re not going to get back into the game because your economy has been sufficiently damaged, or your army was completely overrun by your opponent.  This is usually where we see the “GG”.  But in a lot of other instances, it is surprisingly possible to make comebacks simply because of the nonexistent skill ceiling in an RTS.  This is why I say that playing an RTS feels more like a battle of wills more than anything.  If you want that win hard enough and you push yourself hard enough, you can still take the game in the midst of some dire situations.  Of course, you still have to be smart about it, responding correctly to what you see your opponent doing, and not initiating fights you can’t win.  But assuming that both players have equal knowledge of the strategy and the matchup, the game seems to boil down to who has the better execution.

In this way, Starcraft really is an “e-sport”.  There are strategies, counter-strategies, and plays in sports such as basketball and hockey, and there are moment-to-moment mind games, but the overwhelming factor of success in a sport is simply the players’ ability to execute consistently in all situations.  I think this is an important thing that separates RTS from fighting games.  Fighting games, in my opinion, have a lower skill ceiling.  (By “skill”, I’m referring to execution and not to strategy and yomi, so don’t go lynching me.)  It’s true that one can get infinitely better by having infinitely better reaction times, but there comes a point where you reach a physical limit that is simply shattered by the timing windows of a fighting game.  You’ll never be able to actually react to something like a 4-frame crouching jab in Street Fighter.  It’s practically impossible for the human body to do so.  There are also game limitations on the optimization of damage.  It is definitely possible for a player to learn how to get optimal damage out of every combo opportunity.  So there does come a point where players can approach the execution skill ceiling of a fighting game, though I wouldn’t claim that any particular person has really reached that level yet.  Even Daigo drops his combos on occasion.  But my point is that players are clearly getting close, and as they do, the game’s focus shifts from execution to the mind games.  If both players are capable of punishing optimally and executing their combos perfectly, then all that’s left is to determine what to do based on what you think your opponent will do.  And that’s where I think a lot of players would agree that the depth of the fighting game lies.

The execution skill ceiling in RTS, by contrast, has no end in sight.  By mid-game, with one or two expansion bases running, the possibility for fights on multiple fronts, and the ability to control every individual unit to optimal effect, the amount of things that can possibly be done by a single player blows the mind.  The strategy starts to focus around where you want to spend your time and attention.  But as one increases in skill, they acquire more of the ability to split their attention between multiple things.  Because of this, I’d say that playing an RTS is as much about playing against yourself as it is playing against your opponent.  And to the genre’s credit, victories are so much more satisfying knowing that it was achieved, for the most part, because you were simply more adept than your opponent.  There are very few guesses involved.  You can’t throw out a random wakeup Ultra and hope to win.

So the two genres of competitive games I’ve described feel about as diametrically opposed as they can get.  I can’t claim that I like one more than the other for reasons based solely on the competitive gameplay dynamic, since they’re just so different.  But for external, more pragmatic reasons, I still think I lean toward liking fighting games more than real-time strategy.  The biggest reason is time.  Fighting games finish so much faster.  If you’re being outplayed, you’ll find out within the minute-and-a-half you’re given for the round.  Even if you’re Zangief and your opponent is just running away from you and sitting on a life lead, at least you don’t need to worry about banging your head against a contain for a full five-to-ten minutes until the opponent has the tech and the army size to finally march into your base with confidence.  And you can run 1000+ man tournaments over the course of a weekend, as opposed to GSL’s 64-man tournament being run over the course of several weeks.

Related to the short game times, the learning process in a fighting game is also much quicker.  In a fighting game, you’re typically just learning about situations with no regard to how you got into the situation.  You can practice those situations easily and in very short periods of time with a lot of repetition.  Also, modern fighting games have elaborate training modes with features like input recording (to practice punishing various attacks or blocking certain attack strings), CPU block behavior (to practice hit-confirms or link combos), and hit behavior (to practice counter-hit-confirms, etc).  Training in an RTS, on the other hand, typically requires nothing less than grinding out a ton of games.  And even with a training partner helping you practice counters to particular builds, it can take a long time to master the various timings involved in scouting and countering strategies.  Starcraft II’s best training tool is a build tester custom map, which really only lets you practice what essentially amounts to the early game.  Mid- and late-game situations in an RTS match are very dependent on what your opponent did beforehand, so one has to study both the situation and the lead-up, which can really only be learned through game experience.

I will have to say, though, that I like how serious competitive RTS can actually be played online.  The effect of lag on my games has been, for the most part, non-existent (except for one time when I was doing Muta harass, flew them right over a huge ball of Marines, and lost about two-thirds of them because my retreat move command got lost in a lag spike).  I most definitely can’t say the same about Street Fighter IV, where for half of my online games, I’m not sure if I’m dropping combos because of lag or because I just actually suck.  Unless of course my match becomes a slide show, in which case I’m pretty sure lag is the culprit.

But anyway, I’m just sorta rambling at this point.  The road to Gold – it’s been fun!  Though I basically lost a month-and-a-half to it, I can’t say I regretted it.  It was a great learning experience, and I’m happy to finally understand, at least to some limited degree, what it is that makes competitive RTS such a singular experience.  I’m always disappointed whenever I read some artsy game journalist’s blog, and they shrug off entire swaths of competitive gaming culture out of complete (and willing) ignorance.  I think they’d be surprised at the increasingly growing relevance of competitive multiplayer in the trends of modern gaming, and they’d best learn something about it before they find themselves woefully unprepared to discuss it in any intelligent manner.

Playing to win: Starcraft II, part 4

This is part four of a continuing series detailing the casual player’s attempt to traverse the steep barrier to entry of competitive multiplayer real-time strategy in Starcraft II.  Previous posts here: 1, 2, 3

I guess it serves me right to talk it up about “sitting pretty” in Silver league and how I was outplaying these higher-league players.  Shortly after writing my last post, I fell into a pretty bad rut, losing what felt like 8 or 9 games in a row.  I was obviously extremely discouraged.  Maybe I jinxed everything, but after I had just talked about the importance of expansions, I started going up against macro-minded players with early expansions and larger, sustainable armies.

I’m not entirely sure about what prompted the change.  Maybe I’ve just reached the stage of the game where the casual players have finished the campaign and had their kicks with multiplayer and have moved on to something else.  I used to be one of those people before all of this.  I still sometimes wish I had done what I had done during many games past, embracing my ignorance of the genre’s deeper elements and consoling myself with, “Oh, I could’ve gotten good if I just stuck with the game.”  Is that really true?  I’ve been determined to find out.  When a multiplayer game reaches that point in its lifecycle, where only the dedicated remain playing, it becomes increasingly hard to keep up and stay competitive.  The fact that such a phase exists emphasizes the importance of diving into a multiplayer game as soon as possible.  If you start playing it too late in its lifecycle, the less skillful players will have left, and the dedicated, hardcore players will have only gotten better.  I hate to say it, but if you’re a casual player looking to get into the multiplayer part of a game, waiting a month to start will absolutely make it very hard for you.  The obstacles won’t be insurmountable by any means, but be prepared to lose a lot more than if you had started on the day of the game’s launch.  I can’t say for sure that Starcraft II has reached that point yet, but I can say that the active players on my friends list have certainly dwindled by a significant amount.

In any case, a lot of the players I’m facing are good.  It seems now that my days of coasting by on an extra expansion are over.  I’ve got to work hard for those macro wins.  I not only have to take my expansions, but I have to keep pressure on my opponents’ expansions and maintain aggression throughout the game, all while steadily maintaining good macro.  I have to field those humongous armies and face the opponent’s equally humongous army and figure out how to win in the end.  As most people (at least newbies) would attest, a maxed Zerg army will generally lose against a maxed army from any other race.  I’m currently still residing in Silver league, but I managed to come back from my terrible losing streak to maintain a respectable +12 W/L record (at 90-78), finally reaching rank 1 in my division and retaining a commanding point lead.  But ultimately, those league points don’t matter much, and I’m having a hard time really gauging my actual level of skill.  I read an entire forum thread regarding the need for better transparency in the matchmaking system, so people can tell how well they’re actually doing.

While my losing streak really hit my ego hard, I think it’s important for all newer players to realize that becoming a better player is not necessarily going to culminate in a better W/L record.  While I felt like I had regressed after losing so many games, I eventually came to my senses.  The matchmaking system was designed to try its best to keep you at a 50% W/L record.  It’s very likely that Battle.net decided to pair me up against even better players because I was getting better myself.  I think that that was evident, considering the solid macro-styles of play I encountered.  I actually played a Protoss that did an effective proxy cannon contain without going all-in.  He actually expanded while I transitioned to Roaches, which was the perfect thing to do, as opposed to the newbies that simply cannon rushed with no macro support.

I read a post a while ago from Majestros (AKA Maj) of SonicHurricane.com and tool-assisted combo video fame.  He talked about five milestones of fighting game mastery.  Interestingly enough, I read it and immediately drew parallels between that article’s points and what I would consider to be similar milestones in learning RTS:

1. Special moves: in fighting games, knowing how to do special moves is a matter of knowing the fundamentals of execution.  In an RTS, this amounts to learning your controls – hotkeys, control groups, rallying, shift-queuing, etc.  This also extends to knowing your tech tree and unit requirements, so when you feel like you need to build a particular unit, you know how to go about doing so.
2. Defense: as I mentioned when I first started writing about Starcraft II, as a beginner in beginner leagues, you’re bound to run into every cheese build imaginable.  Knowing how to defend against these simple, all-in strategies is one of the first things you have to learn to be competitive.  If you can never get past this milestone, you’ll be just like the guy that never learns to block the standard beginner attack pattern of jump-in-sweep, as Maj uses as an example.  If you can’t defend against stupidity, you’ll get frustrated and quite before ever getting into the meat of the game.
3. Combos: I also mentioned this in my first Starcraft II post.  Builds and build orders are very much like the “combos” of RTS.  You learn them and commit them to muscle memory.  Learning the various build orders and when they can/should be used is really the start of learning how to play competitively.  Everything before is just fundamentals.
4. Footsies: In fighting games, footsies are where advanced play really starts to kick in.  Footsies serve a lot of purposes.  They can act as a preventative measure to shut down slow, powerful moves.  They’re used to poke and squeeze in that extra bit of damage when neither of you have a clear opportunity for a combo.  It’s hard to make a direct correlation to something in the RTS genre, but I imagine RTS “footsies” to be a mixture of unit compositions and harassment.  Adding certain units to your army can preemptively “shut down” certain tech paths for your opponent.  For instance, if I get Mutalisks (and my inevitable Overseer), chances are a Terran opponent will abandon any hope of trying to do Banshee harass.  Harassment, of course, is the closest thing you’ll find to “footsies” in an RTS.  Knowing how to perform multi-front drops, blink Stalker harass, Nydus mobility abuse, etc. – those are all high-level strategies of whittling away at your opponent bit by bit, without going for that “huge damage” from a massive army pounding at his front door.
5. Fireballs: Fireballs control space.  Controlling space in an RTS is probably one of the highest-level concepts one can possibly learn.  To do so requires intimate knowledge of the map being played as well as race matchups, unit properties, and all sorts of other factors.  The reason that this final milestone is so difficult to master is because space is such a nebulous, “analog” concept.  Learning attack ranges, cutting off attack paths, positioning buildings for maximum effectiveness – it’s almost as if you have to “eyeball” those things.  You only really get better at that with experience.

Given this kind of breakdown, I’d say I’m somewhere between milestones 3 and 4.  I haven’t really learned by heart very many (or very long) build orders aside from a couple of basic ones.  I’ve decided to just hone those few before overwhelming myself with too many other build orders.  I’m also just starting to figure out how to keep constant aggression on an opponent and harass them to the point where they don’t get the chance to build an enormous ball of units to steamroll me.

But I’m also at the point in my game where I’ve got enough experience to just start “messing around” with units and unit compositions.  Day[9] talked about challenging assumptions in one of his recent dailys.  One such assumption I feel is prevalent in lower-level Zerg play is the underestimation of Banelings.  Zerg tier 1 generally consists of mass Speedlings and/or Roaches.  Banelings, at least as far as I was concerned, was for ZvT Baneling-busts, and that was about it.  Why?  Because they have to die to be useful!  If you let up on your micro in the slightest, you can kiss your Banelings (and probably your game) goodbye.

Well, at one point, after being thoroughly discouraged by recent losses, I played against a somewhat rude Terran on Desert Oasis.  Taking my expansion and teching to Lair, I quickly got my Overseer and scouted his base just as he was putting up about 4 or 5 reactors on his barracks.  I’ve lost miserably to mass-Marine strategies, and I had had enough of it.  Feeling like I couldn’t really do worse than I have during in other mass-Marine games, I thought to myself, Ef it – Banelings! While I was at it, I researched burrow, which is something I rarely see in Zerg games.  My Overlords were positioned over the two attack paths on the map.  As he pushed out with his bio-ball, my exploding Overlord alerted me to which side he was approaching from.  I just took a handful of Banelings – maybe 6 or 7, burrowed them in front of a ramp along the attack route, and waited.  Sure enough, his cocky army marched forward, and right as they were on top of the Banelings, I unburrowed and killed about 40+ supply worth of units in the blink of an eye.  I literally laughed out loud – my wife chastised me for almost waking up my son, who was sleeping peacefully at the time.  My remaining mass of Speedlings cleaned up the two or three units left alive, after which I flooded into his main base and devastated his economy.  He decided to draw the game out, having taken an island expansion, but I won the game in the end.  I was so ecstatic that I even made this animated gif:

That moment of victory really opened my eyes to new strategic possibilities and the virtue of challenging one’s own assumptions and habits.  I’ve since been experimenting a lot more with Zergling-Baneling openings and have found that I like the strategy quite a bit for a number of reasons. First of all, converting a Zergling into a Baneling does not require larva, so you can effectively bolster your army while continuing to make drones.  Secondly, the ratio of Zerglings and Banelings is easy to adjust against a lot of common army compositions, like Marine-Marauder and Zealot-Stalker.

And when I threw in the relatively overlooked burrow tech to my experimentation, I actually started having a lot of fun with strategic burrowing and unit placement.  I managed to take down two Colossi with a gob of Zerglings just by burrowing them and waiting until they were standing on top of my army before attacking.  I also played one game in which I base-traded with a Protoss, and he had a relatively large army coming to clean up one of my two remaining bases.  I had to hold that base – if I couldn’t it, was GG for me.  The guy had High Templars with Psi Storm, Immortals, Zealots, and Stalkers.  I had a handful of Mutalisks and as many Zerglings and Banelings as I could muster, burrowed right in front of my base, where he would be approaching it.  When the attack came, I unburrowed right underneath him, moved my Mutalisks into position, closed my eyes, listened to the squishy sound of Banelings exploding, and hoped to God I’d survive, despite the odds against me.  When I opened my eyes again, lo and behold, much of my army was still alive!  I couldn’t tell you exactly what happened, but I haven’t doubted the usefulness of Banelings in the ZvP matchup since.  I went on to win the game by massing Mutalisks and out macroing while he turtled with Photon Cannons and Void Rays.

You know what I realize now, looking back at what I’ve just written?  I’m actually enjoying ladder games.  It doesn’t feel like that same obligatory exercise that I felt that it was in my last post.  You might have noticed that I played 70 more games since my last post.  70!  It’s because I’m enjoying it!  I’m playing on those late nights, and I’ve been finding myself wanting just one more game.  Sure, I still lose to stupid things, and sure, my experimental strategies have led to miserable failure just as many times as they’ve led to success, but I feel like I can handle myself now.  I don’t need to rely on strict build orders, and I don’t so much play in fear anymore.  I can stay calm during those early rushes.  I can be confident in knowing when I get that mid-game lead and how I can ride it to victory.  When I hear commentary and analysis by better players, I find myself nodding in agreement.

If anything, I think I’m well over the enormous wall that faces the casual RTS player looking to play multiplayer competitively.  I’m by no means a pro.  I never intended to be.  I mean, I’m still in Silver League, after all.  I did set a goal out for myself earlier – get to Gold League.  But you know what?  Screw that.  I don’t need to have that Gold League label to realize that I’ve improved and that I’ve finally come to understand the depth and the appeal of competitive RTS.  I’ve done what I’ve set out to do, Gold League acknowledgment be damned.  I think back on all the games I’ve played over the past month-and-a-half (getting close to 200 now), and I’m seeing a lot of shining moments.  Rest assured – if I’ve managed to go from being an RTS moron to where I am now, then there’s definitely hope for all of you out there that want to push yourselves and join the fray.  Just do it!  It’s immensely rewarding, and you will learn to appreciate the genre in a way that you never have before.

Playing to win: Starcraft II, part 3

This is part three of a continuing series detailing the casual player’s attempt to traverse the steep barrier to entry of competitive multiplayer real-time strategy in Starcraft II.  Previous posts here: 1, 2

Getting competitive in a game is really about enduring that breaking point at which things can start to feel dull and tiring.  The first few weeks with a new game are usually the most interesting; you’re learning the basics – mechanics, strategies, techniques.  And then comes that point when you have to just grind it out, take those shiny new things you learned, and with practice, wear them down to a beaten, lackluster veneer.  That’s when you just have to play.  And play.  And play.  That “Find Match” button at the bottom-left corner of the multiplayer window is the  most intimidating thing in the world for me right now.  It’s a struggle to psych myself up to press it.  Why?  It’s probably the fear of losing, first and foremost.  Even after playing 98 friggin’ games, losing still frustrates me to no end.  Maybe it’s the fact that Starcraft II games require such extended, concentrated spans of attention that it gets to be almost like a mental workout.  And I hate working out.

But press forward, I must.  I’ve actually got a to-do list on my iPhone.  On it is the following daily-repeating item: “Play 3 1v1 matches in Starcraft II”.  I’ve made it a chore – an obligation.  “If you hate it so much, then why bother?” you’re probably asking.  No one said the road to success had to be fun.  Winning takes work.  And I’ve made it clear to myself that if I’m going to get any good, I’ve got to get down to business.

But so as not to be a downer for those of you looking for fun and success, I will say that I’m usually quite satisfied after actually forcing myself to engage in those daily skirmishes.  And engage I have.  Did I mention I’ve played 98 games?  My record at the moment of this writing is 54-44 (and I’m sporting my new Baneling portrait, too!).  I’m still sittin’ easy in Silver League, but to be honest, I feel that I’ve reached the point where I can go toe-to-toe with Gold players.  I’ve certainly trounced a good number of them, and I’ve even defeated at least two Platinum players.  I’m currently standing at rank 2 in my Silver division, and I pretty much feel like I’m just waiting around for my league promotion.

Wow, right?  That isn’t something a “casual” player tends to achieve before giving up outright.  And I’ve accomplished it simply because I was willing to go that distance, play those games every day, and not give up.  I think a lot of people shrug off the competitive aspect of gaming after too few games, deeming themselves inadequate far too quickly.  Thus far in my posts, I’ve definitely emphasized the importance of knowledge, but I don’t know if I’ve yet stressed the indispensable value of experience.  Play.  Just play.  I’ve required only three games a day for myself.  That’s less than an hour for typical games, which are usually on the order of 20 minutes a piece.  And that’s if you macro up.  If you get cheesed or rushed (or if you’re doing the cheesing/rushing), you’re looking at five-minute games – that’s practically the length of a drawn-out 3-out-of-5 fighting game match.  If you’re any kind of avid gamer, you probably spend a lot more than an hour playing games on your typical night.  I also happen to have a nigh 11-month-old kid who loves crawling to my desk and babbling for attention while daddy’s trying to pwn n00bs.  If I can squeeze in those 3+ games a night, you don’t have much of an excuse for yourself.  You’ll start seeing returns soon enough just by playing regularly.

Anyway, you get the point.  Play the game.  Keep playing.  If you’re not entirely braindead, you’ll get better eventually (even if your record might not reflect it).  It’s human nature.  Simple enough.

Now what have I been doing with my game since my last post?  Well, as I’ve learned from a lot of Day[9]‘s commentary (like this gem from the Gamescom IEM finals with Idra(Z) vs. Morrow(T)), I’ve been practicing my macro and my expansion timing.  Still.  And I can tell you right now that the most common source of failure from the opponents I’ve defeated is this: one-base play.  Barring my (annoyingly frequent) failure to scout proxy stargates or barracks, when I see my opponent over-fortify their one base with defenses, I’m usually pretty secure in the likelihood that I will win the game.  At that point, it’s just macro practice.  When a game has gone 10 minutes and the opponent still hasn’t expanded, I’m all but absolutely sure that I’ve won.

Before my last post, my typical strategy was to scout for a rush build, and, if I saw one, I’d one-base to build up a force before expanding.  This is probably a sound strategy at extremely high levels against opponents that can time rushes with deadly precision.  But I’ve made it a point for the past two or so weeks to just fast expand – every game (yes, even on something as frightening as Desert Oasis).  And not your safe 14-pool, 15-hatch expand; I’m talkin’ about 14- or 15-hatch, then pool.  I figured I’d give it a go in all my games just to see how narrowly I can get away with it.  Why?  Because if I can hold that early expansion past the opponent’s first push, I can usually just brute force my way to a win with overwhelming numbers – typically involving Mutalisk harassment/containment while I take a third and fourth expansion and build up a max-supply army.  Once I started practicing a full-on macro style of play, my win-loss record went from teetering back and forth to an extended win streak (punctuated by some losses because of mistimed or overextended expansions, or, more frequently, scouting failures).  Once I started making it a point to aim for a fast expansion into a three-base mid-game, my opponents began to look surprisingly frail in contrast to the disgusting number of forces I could field.  There was one point at which I had won 14 out of 17 consecutive games due to sheer macro.  I actually found myself maxing out supply in some of those games.

So if I may humbly offer some advice to those of you who are still in Bronze or the low end of the Silver league, it’s this: learn to expand.  Practice taking that natural expansion.  Instead of going for that early all-in push, try relaxing it a bit, spend some money for that extra nexus / command center / hatchery, and use those early forces to defend.  Also learn good times to expand even further.  If you just easily defeated your opponent’s push and destroyed a good number of his units, expand!  Forget the counter-push and just play a safe game.  If you just harassed your opponent and you get the sense that he’s going to spend the next chunk of his income bolstering his defenses, expand!  Push that expansion timing to the limit.  Play around and find that point where you just can’t expand any sooner without overextending yourself or overcommitting resources.  I’ve certainly made that mistake in a few of my games.  Sure, games will be longer when you play a solid macro game, and you’ll have to be even more attentive at using up your newly acquired income, but that’s basically the point – to play solidly.  You won’t win games in five minutes, but you will get better.  The most formidable opponents I’ve faced are simply the ones that expanded.  They don’t have to have fantastic micro or creative unit compositions.  If they secure their natural early, I become very afraid – because at that point, they can churn out and sustain just as formidable an army as I can.  And I will do everything in my power to ensure that expansion doesn’t reach maximum effectiveness.

The very last game I played was against a Platinum Terran.  He employed some advanced Medivac drop harassment that almost cost me the game, eventually transitioning to cloaked Banshee harass, which I was able to just barely defend against with the help of my hardy Overseers (I love those units).  He took expansions relatively early.  The game was a very tense one that had me clinging to dear life, defending my bases by the skin of my slimy teeth until I could finally macro up.  Eventually, I was able to pull through, and after defending against several more of his pushes, I scouted and destroyed his high-yield expansion and started putting pressure onto his natural expansion (while securing the high-yield for myself).  Eventually, that single extra expansion gave me the economic edge I needed to eventually overwhelm his forces and win the game.  As I’ve already emphasized, expansions are the things that really differentiate Bronze and Silver league play from the higher levels.  Learn to use them.  Once you do, you’ll basically be at a Gold level of play, if not higher.

P.S.  Patch 1.1 coming soon!  Zerg isn’t actually getting buffs, but they’re definitely getting a lot less nerfs.  For the more distant future, I’m personally hoping for something to reduce the easily-employed effectiveness of the Terran bio-ball, lest it gets as out of hand as the early Dawn of War II Tyranid bio-ball.   I’m also praying for some boost to early-game Zerg anti-air (like slightly increasing Queen anti-air damage or Queen speed on-creep), because Protoss stargate rushes still have me crapping my pants.  Those are my two cents, anyway.

Playing to win: Starcraft II, part 2

This is part two of a continuing series detailing the casual player’s attempt to traverse the steep barrier to entry of competitive multiplayer real-time strategy in Starcraft II.  Previous posts here: 1

So I’m back again for an update on my progress.  I bet you thought I’d quit like last time, huh?  Anyway, on Friday, I snagged my 25th win and a promotion to Silver league (not to mention my neat new Roach portrait)!  I got up to rank 2 in my Bronze division before being moved out.  My record is now 25-24, my rank hovering somewhere around the mid-30′s in my new Silver division.  I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t excited.

As for my games, I’m having a lot of trouble with two things as Zerg: early air rushes (i.e. Void Rays or cloaking Banshees), and early cloaking cheese (i.e. Dark Templars or, surprise surprise, cloaking Banshees).  Both of those things exploit early-game Zerg deficiencies – namely lack of anti-air and lack of detection.  I’ve actually made it more of a habit to get at least one Overseer as quickly as possible, and I’ve been finding them to be a very good investment – not only for cheese-prevention, but for that crucial ability to scout an opponent’s walled-off base (via their faster travel speed and/or Changelings).

Speaking of cheese, the last game I played was extremely satisfying, as I played against a Protoss that went with an all-in proxy cannon cheese build, where he slowly built cannons closer and closer to my hatchery (and mineral line).  His cannons got to the point where they could snipe half of my mining drones.  Luckily, I kept my cool, delayed his push with mass roaches, and eventually transported a good chunk of them into his almost entirely undefended base and forced him to surrender.

Aside from that, I’ve had a number of enjoyable matches that went to mid- or late-game.  Most of my games tend to involve me outmacro’ing and containing the opponent on one base until they’re mineral starved, at which point I commence my all-out assault.  Those games aren’t all that exciting because I usually know that I’ve won long before they actually surrender.  However, I have had a couple of very good, extremely close back-and-forth games.  If my goal was to get into the “meat” of competitive multiplayer RTS, those games would indicate to me that I’m well on my way.

Surprisingly, I’ve found that I’m having the most trouble fighting off other Zerg.  I’m still not very comfortable with the matchup because I get far fewer opportunities to play against other Zerg players since everyone else is playing the easier Protoss and Terran races.  I don’t generally enjoy playing ZvZ because it typically involves both of us racing to Mutalisks and seeing who can control the air first.  But I did have one pretty enjoyable game recently, where my opponent made clever use of burrowed Roaches to hit my mineral line.  I’ll probably give that strategy a try during some future ZvZ match.

Now, onto the reason for this post: how have I gotten this far?  Scoff if you will, Gold/Platinum/Diamond readers.  Getting to where I’m at really is no small feat for the casual RTS’er.  I have a cousin who loved the original Starcraft’s single-player experience and was extremely excited for Starcraft 2.  He’s one of those average joes of RTS, much like I was before attempting this entire multiplayer thing.  Judging from his record, he’s been getting creamed in Bronze league, going something like 5-10 in 1v1 so far, after which it appears he got discouraged and stopped trying 1v1 entirely.  So it’s not like you can eke out free wins just for playing a lot of RTS.  Single-player and multiplayer are completely different beasts.  The multiplayer arena is actually rather brutal.  Don’t ever let anyone tell you differently.

For the most part, I’ve been following my own advice.  The biggest help for me so far has been my efforts to view as many streams, videocasts, and tutorials as I can.  I already pointed out Husky and HDgamer in my last post, whose YouTube channels are already on my RSS aggregator, but I’d like to give a shoutout to Glen from the comments section of my last post, who directed me to the fantastic (and apparently extremely famous) commentator Sean Plott, aka Day[9].  I’ll admit that I found him a bit annoying at first, but his whimsical style of commentary grew on me.  That, and his gameplay analysis is impeccable.  I’ve been watching his daily streams, and I’m constantly learning new ways to look at a game and dissect player decisions.  Even if I couldn’t point out a single concrete lesson from his videos that directly affected my game, his analysis has, if anything, made me more confident in my knowledge of the game and in my strategic decisions.

But fortunately, I can point out at least one thing I learned from Day[9]‘s videos.  Again, my thanks go out to Glen for linking Day[9]‘s “Back to the Basics” video for Starcraft 2.  In it, Day[9] goes over what really comprises the fundamentals of competitive RTS play: macromanagement.  If there’s one thing you need to do well in an RTS, it’s that you need to have good macro.  The micro is secondary.  Your micro will rarely win you a battle if you don’t have a competent army and the economy to support it.  However, you can still win battles with poor micro if you have solid macro fundamentals and can simply overpower your opponent through sheer numbers.  Day[9] went into various things like learning hotkeys and other control fundamentals, but the primary focus of the video was in learning to establish a “mental checklist” of things you need to remember to do at all times:

1. Make supply (i.e. Supply Depots, Pylons, or Overlords)
2. Make workers
3. Make units
4. Use racial macro mechanic (i.e. Call Mule, Chrono Boost, or Spawn Larva)
5. Spend resources
6. (Zerg) Spread creep

Day[9] also points out that it’s important, amidst all of this, to have a plan.  You have to work toward something.  Otherwise, you’re just spinning wheels.  Both of those things – establishing the mental checklist and having a plan – have been things I’ve consciously tried to work into my games.  And for the most part, it’s worked well for me.  My macro abilities have improved significantly because I’m just remembering to do things more often, and I haven’t really had to rely on remembering specific build orders because, as I’m working toward my plan, my build just falls out of it.

My “plan” typically involves the most common beginner Zerg strategy: mass Mutalisks (and blowing the rest of your stockpiled minerals on Zerglings).  It tends to work out pretty well unless the opponent consciously counters it.  But lately, I’ve been finding a lot of success with early Roaches against early tech or expansions.  And now that I’ve reached my 25th win milestone, I’m a lot more eager to mess around with more micro-intensive Infestor and Nydus Worm strategies.

On that note, I think it’s very important to really familiarize yourself with all of the units at your race’s disposal.  In a well-balanced game, all of a player’s options will have some important use case, whether it be all-purpose or highly situational.  This statement holds true for fighting games as well.  Learning how to use all of your special moves and when to use them is critical to playing a character well.  For instance, even though it doesn’t generally see a lot of usage, Abel’s EX Wheel Kick in Street Fighter IV is great at mid-range against projectiles.  Knowing this and having that reaction trained into muscle memory could improve one’s performance against the plethora of shotos out there.  In the same manner, I think it’s important to train with every unit in an RTS.  Sure, my mass Mutalisks might win me a good number of games, but in the long run, the better players will start anticipating and countering the strategy.  Since Mutalisks lose to something like mass Marines, what am I supposed to do then?  If my experience with Infestors was just as deep as it was with Mutalisks, I could just as easily Fungal Growth my way to victory.

Unfortunately, I still have limited experience with all of the Zerg units.  I’ve only recently used Infestors and Nydus Worms in one league match, and I feel like they have enormous strategic potential, if I can just get more practice with them.  The same goes with Ultralisks.  They’re amazing late-game units, but I’m usually too reluctant to tech to tier 3 in my games simply because tier 3 is still outside of my comfort zone.  Acquiring that all-around familiarity is crucial to getting your game out of that beginner’s rut.  Without it, you’re likely to run into a lot of situations that appear “overpowered” or “unbeatable” because you’re lacking the relevant chunk of knowledge.

I’d also like to cover another topic that was brought to my attention – cheese builds.  One thing I initially hated about playing Zerg was their lack of what I called “creative” openings (i.e. cheese).  The only Zerg cheese I can think of is the one I fell victim to in ZvZ, where the opponent went for an early pool and built a Spine Crawler next to my mineral line.  Over time, I’ve actually come to appreciate the fact that the Zerg don’t have the same cheese builds that Protoss and Terran do.  The reason is because they’re more often than not a fake display of skill.  You can get free wins with them at low levels of play, and you’ll feel good about yourself, but long-term, they lose all effectiveness, leaving you with nothing else to fall back on because you ended all of your games early with your cheese.  You never got to learn expansion timing or attack timing or good macro because you never got that far.  I was mildly agitated by a friend whose team league partner pulled off a planetary fortress rush.  My friend immediately said he had to “try that build” more.  Why??  This is the same friend that, for pretty much all of our 2v2 placement games, 6-pool rushed with Zerglings.  We won a couple games that way, but after that, the rush just was not working anymore.  The opponents were better, and after we went all-in with our lame rush strategy, we had no economy to fall back on.  I think he finally realized we’d actually have to play a solid game, but nevertheless, it annoys me that cheese builds are getting admiration from the community.  Admittedly, they’re fun to watch, but I’ve come to respect them less and less.  I can relate this to an anecdote from my Super Street Fighter IV experiences.  My company has a bunch of nubsauces.  Seriously.  One guy started playing Cammy because she was “fun”, which translated to, “I can Cannon Spike randomly, and if you block it, you can’t punish me because I’m too far away.”  That’s not actually true.  What he didn’t realize was that he could be punished, but few people knew that you had time to forward dash first before initiating a punish.  So he actually got a lot of wins with this Cammy “cheese”.  That is, until I hunkered down at home and practiced in training mode with Abel, and started punishing the guy’s Cannon Spike spam every time.  After I got into the groove of baiting his random Cannon Spikes and punishing with Tornado Throw or a huge Change of Direction FADC combo, he was basically free.  That’s the nature of cheese.  It relies on novelty and not skill.  So, whenever possible, practice solid gameplay rather than cheese.  Even though it’s harder to learn, it takes you a lot farther.

So those are my thoughts.  So far, I’m not seeing myself quitting anytime soon.  Starcraft II’s balance feels decent (though I suspect that the Zerg will be getting some very slight buffs at some point in time), and the game has definitely got the hype and player base that it needs for its competitive longevity.  It also helps that a bunch of my friends play it, which was definitely not the case for Dawn of War II.  While I’m here, allow me to establish a plan for the future of this series of posts.  My plan is to reach Gold league.  It’s not entirely insane.  Looking at the recent games in my match history, I was surprised to discover that while I was still in Bronze league, Battle.net was actually pairing me up with a large number of Silver league players (and at least one Gold).  In fact, I ended up winning against the Gold league player.  So Gold league is definitely within my grasp, and if it’s within my grasp, anyone can do it with enough effort and persistence.  I think it’s safe to say that reaching Gold league qualifies as having “penetrated” the barrier to competitive RTS.  But I wouldn’t say that that goal is set in stone.  Really, all I’m after is that thrill of well-matched competition, where games aren’t entirely lost to incompetence, but rather where games are won by true skill and strategy.  And as I’ve drawn closer to that point, I’ve been tasting that wonderful sensation, and it tastes delicious.

Playing to win: Starcraft II, part 1

This is part one of a continuing series detailing the casual player’s attempt to traverse the steep barrier to entry of competitive multiplayer real-time strategy in Starcraft II.

So here I am again, back at the whole RTS thing.  I might’ve mentioned before that I’m pretty terrible at competitive real-time strategy.  I’m not a total newbie to the genre, but as far as online play goes, I’m pretty bad.

Last time, I didn’t quite get as proficient at Dawn of War II as I had hoped.  I liked it, but Street Fighter IV came out around that time, and that’s when all of my competitive gaming efforts went into the fighting game scene.  I can honestly say I learned a lot about competitive gaming in the past couple of years – the experience, the mindset, and especially the culture.  Trust me – I really wanted to write some sort of tribute to the fighting game culture, but I didn’t think my words could do it justice.

Anyway, that’s not what I’m here to talk about.  This game called Starcraft II came out.  You might’ve heard of it.  I hear everyone’s playing it.  If there was ever a time to go all-in toward learning competitive RTS, now is that time. And make no mistake, I have a lot of learning to do.  My gaming history, if you’re not familiar with it, has a lot of RTS in it.  I first became aware of the genre with Warcraft II and Red Alert.  I instantly fell in love with it and have played a plethora of titles ever since.  Those early RTS’s were what got me hooked onto PC gaming after the lull that followed the golden age of point-and-click adventures.

But I’ve never had the balls to fight against other humans.  I loved the single-player campaign, and I was content to comp-stomp afterward.  Yeah, I’m that guy.  I’d soon discover much later about how much was involved in becoming competitive at RTS.  Build orders, “macro”, “micro”, APM, etc.  That did not sound like the fun diversion I remembered from my youth.  So I was content to just watch in awe at the Koreans doing their thing while I continued being mostly exclusive to single-player (with a few exceptions, like Age of Empires III for its persistent online upgrade system and Rise of Legends because I loved the mechanics so much).

But after really immersing myself in the fighting game culture as of late, I acquired a newfound appreciation and respect for competitive gaming as a whole.  And while I would like to continue playing fighting games, my conscience nags me about how I’ve persistently avoided the competitive RTS scene out of fear – fear of my inadequacies and utter lack of skill.  Maybe now, I’m just fearful that my best years are lost and I won’t be able to learn and adapt as I once might have been able to do.

15 minutes til midnight...

But I’m putting those fears aside yet again with Starcraft II.  I’m going in knowing I can only get better, because I sure ain’t getting much worse.  I procured my copy at a Best Buy midnight launch (which was, by the way, the first line-waiting event I’ve attended by the end of which I actually had something to show for it).  I wasn’t expecting a lot of people because of the online availability, but I showed up 45 minutes early just in case.  By midnight, the line had actually grown a lot longer than I had expected it to be.

Since then, I played through the campaign, even replaying several missions multiple times to acquire some of the achievements.  I played about a dozen 1v1 custom games against computer, and I played a number of comp-stomp custom games with friends online.  Yeah, not exactly competitive by any means.  But for the past couple of days, I’ve gotten over that wall of fear and just dove into Battle.net’s 1v1 ladder. If you haven’t tried the Starcraft II ladder games yet, they start out something like this: you’re first allowed to play 50 practice league games on easier game settings and less rush-friendly maps.  After that, you play five placement matches to determine which of the five overarching “leagues” you’ll be placed in, after which you just play to reach the top of a 100-man division consisting of random players from your league.

I decided to choose the Zerg because they were my favorite race in the original game.  I later learned that the Zerg are the “hardest” race to play – requiring a ton of macroeconomic maintenance and adaptive, reactive play, both of which I am especially terrible at.  I seem to have a penchant (possibly subconscious) for making my competitive life harder – like when I chose to main Carl Clover in BlazBlue or my somewhat brief stint with C. Viper in Street Fighter IV.  The guys at work are well aware of my competitive masochism.

So I played maybe three practice league games before starting ranked matches.  It’s a little ironic, actually.  The thing that drove me out of the practice league was the fact that the league settings made the game so slow.  Ranked matches are at the fastest game speed setting (I think), which was how I had practiced during custom games.  I couldn’t stand just waiting there for things to happen.

My placement match W-L record was 2-3, which was much better than I thought I’d do.  But as I had expected, I was placed into the Bronze league – the lowest one.  Ultimately, I decided it’s a good thing – I can learn everything from the bottom up.  I’ll probably end up seeing a lot of extreme, all-in strategies.  I’ll learn to counter those degeneracies before having to tackle players that mix strategies together and truly adapt their play over time.

In fact, I’ve already encountered (and lost) to a number of them: Void Ray rush, two-stargate Phoenix rush, proxy pylon inside my base, proxy cannon in front of my ramp, Medivac drop, infantry spam; I even got trounced by my first Zerg opponent because he went for a fast spawning pool and built a Spine Crawler right next to my mineral line without me noticing.  But all of those experiences have been good, because I’ve been learning about the existence of these “cheese” tactics and how they should be countered; hint: most of them are easily beaten with the help of good scouting, which is something I’ve never done well in RTS, but it’s something I’m learning quickly (albeit in humiliating ways).

So I’m well on my way into competitive Starcraft.  My W-L record is currently 7-8 in the Bronze League.  I’m 38th in my division (as of this writing), and I’m continuing to learn.  The majority of my wins have been against turtling Protoss players (I’ve probably encountered three of them?) that rush with Void Rays, and when that fails, turtle up and build cannons all over their one base while they tech up to Carriers and a Mothership that just sit there and do nothing.  I simply wait it out, make sure they don’t expand, pick off their stragglers, and take my sweet time macroing up until I have a force that can attack their base safely (i.e. Brood Lords with supporting Mutalisks/Corruptors) while they run out of resources.  Every turtling Protoss player that did this taunted me through chat, telling me to attack them.  Admittedly, I was extremely slow in teching up to Brood Lords, but in the end, my patience was rewarded (despite one player calling me a pansy while he waited forever for his imminent demise; he really should’ve just surrendered).  Here are some of the other basic Starcraft lessons I’ve learned so far in my limited multiplayer experience:

• Scout, scout, scout!  In addition to thwarting the cheese that a lot of people will try at my (low) level, scouting gives you valuable tactical information.  Most players (at least at my level) will not go for balanced army compositions, so it’s my job to figure out what they’re going for and prepare a counter.  I’m told this is especially important for Zerg players.  This has already saved me a couple of times – once when I thwarted a Terran trying to build a barracks in front of my base, and another time when I countered a Protoss Void Ray rush that could’ve easily ended the game.  The guy immediately resigned after the last of his Void Rays fell to my Hydralisks and Queens.  I also beat a Zerg player tonight when I scouted his base and discovered he had gone for a premature expansion.  He was quickly overwhelmed by my Zergling blob.
• Learn and practice a solid build order!  I’ve messed up several games because I accidentally built an evolution chamber instead of a spawning pool at the beginning.  Or because I forgot to assign workers to my refinery after it was built and realized later that I had absolutely no vespene.  Or because I kept getting supply-locked by my insufficient Overlord numbers, which prevented me from fielding the army I needed to counter an early push.  Yes, I realize that eventually, I’ll need to learn multiple build orders to deal with different races and maps, but for now, I’m just working with a balanced one to start with.  I’ll get to other ones once I’m comfortable with one.  I’m getting the sense that starting build orders are like your fighting game combos.  You have to just memorize them and practice them over and over and over again.  They’re the best way to survive the early game, which is in itself a noble goal for a beginner such as myself.  You can work on the mid- and late- game strategy after you’ve become extremely comfortable with the early game.  This is the same way I started learning Dawn of War 2, by familiarizing myself with the tier 1 strategy, and after that, working on how to incorporate tier 2 units, and so forth.  A lot of beginner RTS games, I’m finding, don’t ever reach levels of play such that the highest tech tier is even needed, so why bother making it a priority to learn how to use those super units?  Chances are you won’t need them when you’re starting out.
• Use up resources!  Unused resources = the army you could have but don’t. Part of this involves always watching your supply limit to ensure you can use those resources on new units.  I still have a lot of trouble with both of those things, but my supply management has been slowly improving.  This is the type of thing that I imagine will take lots of practice to deal with.  For Zerg, it’s especially difficult because you’re generally going to have to remember to spit larvae with your Queens in order to have the larvae to effectively spend all of your resources on new army units.  I haven’t been able to deal with that macro all that well yet.  I still have games where I find myself with thousands of excess minerals, so it’s definitely not an easy thing to remedy.

So there you go.  There’s my first week or so of Starcraft II.  But instead of rambling on about specific strategies, I’d rather discuss the mindset and experience of competitive RTS play and what it’s like being that nub trying to get to a point of enjoyable play in a competitive genre with an extremely high barrier to entry.  With that in mind, it’s easy for me to relate my fighting game experiences to competitive RTS because there are inevitable similarities across all types of competitive activities.

One thing that really infused me with the motivation to learn fighting games was when I immersed myself in the culture.  I started this by visiting community sites like Shoryuken and EventHubs and adding some of their feeds to my aggregator.  Those led me to watch a lot of match and tutorial videos, watch  tournament streams, listen to podcasts, and follow the goings-on of various top players.  The Evo2k streams for the past two years have been fantastic, and community representatives like Gootecks and Capcom’s Seth Killian have been absolutely instrumental in building and sustaining this rich culture of fighting games.  Likewise, for Starcraft, I’ve been following two YouTube channels for commentators Husky and HDGamer, both of whom do excellent commentary and tutorials for the game.  I also peruse the GameReplays website for VODcasts and the occasional strategy article.  I’m in the process of looking for a good Starcraft podcast for my daily commute as well, so I’m open to suggestions.  Aside from the inspiration, the most likely side effect of this immersion is that you can end up incidentally attaining a lot of knowledge about the game.  It certainly happened for me in Street Fighter IV, and I’m already beginning to gain a lot of knowledge about Starcraft strategy just by watching top-level matches.  As I’ve pointed out in the past, competitive play mainly revolves around two elements: strategy and execution.  Knowledge is the basis of strategy.  Without knowledge, you can’t plan effective strategies.  And obviously, knowing more than your opponent can be a huge advantage.

Another thing I got out of my fighting game experience was the importance of practice.  This is related to improving execution – the second part of effective play.  When I was learning Abel, I actually set up a practice regimen, where I would have to perform his f+mk link a number of times a day, and where I’d have to successfully land his change of direction FADC c+hp lk roll into falling sky from both sides until it became natural.  I even practiced contingencies, in case the f+mk link was off by a frame, or if I messed up the c+hp link after the FADC.  After weeks of this regimen, my game improved dramatically.  I haven’t quite set up a regimen for my Starcraft play, but that’s mainly because I’m not confident I actually know what to practice yet.  Again, knowledge plays an important role here as well.  I have casually practiced build orders in custom 1v1 games against AI, but I have a feeling there’s a lot of micromanagement tricks I can practice as well (with the more micro-intensive units like Infestors), and that I haven’t quite learned what they are yet.

Lastly, learning fighting games has taught me to have the right mindset for competitive play in general.  The experience is vastly different from your typical single-player experience.  Most modern single-player games are built around a design foundation that is optimized to make the player feel as good as possible.  When you’re trying to get into a multiplayer scene, you have to toss that notion out the window. You’re going to feel bad.  You’re going to feel stupid.  You’re going to feel pathetic and helpless and scared. To really dive into competitive play (especially in an unfamiliar genre), you have to accept the fact that you’re going to be the high school freshman – in special ed, with acne all over your face, and the clothes your mom bought for you.  Once you’re over that, just play!  Forget your win-loss record and the leaderboards.  Trust me – you won’t want to look at those things anyway.  When you worry about those things, you get into a state where you just end up fearing for every game you play.  You’ll never experiment with bold strategies, and you’ll second-guess everything you do.  And the worst part of being overly concerned with “points”?  Each win will drive you closer and closer to quitting, because with that short-term mindset, you’ll just want to quit while you’re ahead, right?  You have to humble yourself and focus solely on the learning process.  Seeing your game advance to new levels is really where the enjoyment lies, even if you do end up losing a lot.  Just look for those things you did better each time, and you won’t be as stressed out.  Every time you lose, you can learn something.  In fact, you might even have to get a bit masochistic when you start out, because losing is often the only way you’ll be learning anything meaningful.  I know this series is about playing to win, but you can’t win without first losing.  A lot.  Your Terran Marauder spam won the game for you?  That’s great, but you probably didn’t learn anything new.  The guy on the other end of the beating (i.e. me), in the meantime, will be busy scouring for ways to destroy you and the other copycats the next time around, and believe me, my speedlings are out for blood.

iPhone: More than just another portable

After all of the peer pressure, I finally took the dive and procured the latest iPhone.  Coming from old-school Palm devices, I have to say I am extremely pleased with my new acquisition.  In fact, I’ve spent just about all of the past month or so customizing everything on the phone and loading it up with all manner of music, podcasts, and, of course, apps – which is really what I’m here to talk about.  There’s been a lot of hype these recent years in the gaming industry about the growth and potential of the mobile app market.  Many of the traditionally console-oriented companies have already found the waters to be inviting, EA and Square-Enix being among the notable ones.

Of course, while this massive market explosion was going on, I was sitting idly by, twiddling my thumbs on my portable mainstay DS, and waiting for the right time to get myself one of these devices of legend.  The announcement and subsequent release of the iPhone 4 presented exactly the opportunity I was looking for.  And let me tell you, I am still catching up on what I’ve missed in the world of smartphones (and, very specifically, the iPhone).

Luckily for me, I’ve been a faithful viewer of Area 5‘s CO-OP series (through its entire run), which did me the service of pointing out a good number of the popular iPhone games.  I already had a list in mind before even installing iTunes.  But that didn’t prevent me from browsing endlessly through iTunes’ massive app store.  I’ve spent weeks researching what I should buy, and I also spent a good amount of time just demoing countless “lite” versions of games that piqued my interest.  Finally, after nearly a month of iTunes obsession, the contents of my iPhone are beginning to settle down, and I’ve had the opportunity to gather my thoughts on the device’s viability as a true gaming platform.