Starcraft II HotS Multiplayer Swarm-All

Here's a replay I think you'll enjoy.

IMAGE(http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-135737.jpg)

mrwynd wrote:

Here's a replay I think you'll enjoy.

IMAGE(http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-135737.jpg)

Haven't watched it yet, but it has to be EPIC!

MoOsEoFdOoM!!!!!

ahrezmendi wrote:
Farscry wrote:

Being a housecat pitted against a tiger just isn't any fun.

So where does a Bilge Cat rank in that hierarchy? Higher than a house cat? Perhaps on par with a Bilge Tiger?

I don't know for sure, but I know that it ranks above ninjas!

In SC1 I used to train 3 AI versus me on a small map. Definitely greatly helps build up your build order and speed since they used to rush with 3x my forces.

Might have to make something similar in SC2.

mrwynd wrote:

Here's a replay I think you'll enjoy.

IMAGE(http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-135737.jpg)

That was pretty entertaining. Why did you make so many corruptors at the end? Were you planning on turning them into brood lords?

Dyni wrote:
mrwynd wrote:

Here's a replay I think you'll enjoy.

IMAGE(http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-135737.jpg)

That was pretty entertaining. Why did you make so many corruptors at the end? Were you planning on turning them into brood lords?

Yeah, I did a poor job of transitioning at the end, too many corruptors, not enough brood lords. I should have done more upgrading and stuck with roach/hydra or upgraded zerglings.

Played some Battlenet again. Two wins, this time and got bumped up. Is it just me or are Battlenet guys much more nasty when they lose? I got called "noob" four times, each time when I won. I don't get called that when I lose. Weird.

Less "Battlenet guys" and more "Internet guys", but yeah.

LarryC wrote:

Played some Battlenet again. Two wins, this time and got bumped up. Is it just me or are Battlenet guys much more nasty when they lose? I got called "noob" four times, each time when I won. I don't get called that when I lose. Weird.

I've always wondered about that. If one loses to a noob what does that make them? Sub-noob? Neg-noob?

Troglanoob.

MrDeVil909 wrote:
LarryC wrote:

Played some Battlenet again. Two wins, this time and got bumped up. Is it just me or are Battlenet guys much more nasty when they lose? I got called "noob" four times, each time when I won. I don't get called that when I lose. Weird.

I've always wondered about that. If one loses to a noob what does that make them? Sub-noob? Neg-noob?

Someone with Anger management issues. Of a shortage of life skills. Either really... sometimes both.

Another entertaining 2v2 practice league game:

IMAGE(http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-135827.jpg)

Dyni wrote:
ahrezmendi wrote:
Dyni wrote:

2-1 in placement matches so far. I'm afraid to win anymore. I think I just played bad people the first 2 games, and I don't want to get placed too high! Cuz I'm bad.

You won't get placed too high. In my 3v3 team, we went 4-1 for our placement matches, and landed in Bronze. I went 3-2 for my 1v1 placements, and also landed in Bronze. I highly suspect you'll land in Bronze no matter what. :)

That's good to hear! I've watched enough high level replays to know my macro skills are far too awful to be in anything but bronze atm.

Sooo, I went 3-2 in my placement matches, and I ended up in Gold. I foresee a losing streak in my immediate future. I can tell I'm getting better with my macro, but if I get caught with my pants down, I tend to panic and freeze up. Both of my losses were from an early'ish rush, one terran and one zerg.

In the early game, when do you protoss players throw down your first gateway? When/where do you chrono boost? What general strategies have you been using? So far, I've been massing gateways and spamming sentries, zealots, and stalkers while trying to improve my macro skills. I figured I'm better off sticking to one basic strategy while I try to get my bearings.

Here are my last 2 placement games, if anyone wouldn't mind critiquing me a bit. I know I was supply blocked and had thousands of minerals at points, so please don't be too harsh I'm just looking for a few important things to work on. There's so much to do in this game that I'm just not sure what to work on first.

IMAGE(http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-135828.jpg)
I won this one, though it certainly wasn't pretty.

IMAGE(http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-135829.jpg)
I lost this one. He built 2 barracks early and threw more troops at me than I was equipped to handle.

Dyni wrote:

In the early game, when do you protoss players throw down your first gateway? When/where do you chrono boost? What general strategies have you been using? So far, I've been massing gateways and spamming sentries, zealots, and stalkers while trying to improve my macro skills. I figured I'm better off sticking to one basic strategy while I try to get my bearings.

I use the pretty standard 3 Gate Robo opening, well, I'm working on it my timing needs work so all numbers are approximate. 9 Pylon 11 Gate 14 Pylon and then I get up to 3 gates, cyber core, twilight council and robo as soon as resources allow.

*edit*

And and I Boost liberally, just making sure to remember to keep energy for boosting Charge.

Tip 1: Always build two Gateways unless you're planning to tech to something specific. Gateway units are generally useful for a lot of situations.

Tip 2: Always overlap Pylon power over your Gateways.

Tip 3: Rule of thumb is 3 or 4 production facilities per base. If you're not maxxing three or four production facilities, you don't need to expand. You need more production facilities. Generally, 4 is all-in aggression, 3 is normal, and 2 (going to 3) for when you're teching to more advanced units.

Tip 4: Need more scouting. Use Phoenixes or Observers to scout.

Tip 5: Need to find a comfortable timing for building Forge. Generally, you want to build the Forge and some Cannons when you suspect that enemy air is on the way.

I posted a vid uploaded by HDStarcraft of a dual-Stargate opening. It's nice to practice against the AI, especially for use on ledge-heavy maps like Blistering Sands. You don't need to follow it strictly. You can opt for Gateway-Robotics instead of Stargate-Stargate.

Disclaimer: I was ranked Gold League myself. I've been expecting to be stomped, but I'm actually climbing the Gold rankings. I suspect that you and I are about the same skill level.

I struggle with the Forge a bit, I like upgrading my ground units, but fitting it into the early game is proving tricky unless I want cannons. And then remembering to actually upgrade my units is another story.

LarryC wrote:

Tip 2: Always overlap Pylon power over your Gateways.

Yeah, learned that the hard way. Nothing like having 4 Gates taken out of commission with the destruction of one pylon.

Dipped a cautious toe into some AI skirmishes last night and found I beat Easy AI in 42 seconds so it's not as hideous as I thought.

I need, now, to do 2 things:

1: Sack up and try some online multiplayer.
2: Subscribe to this thread.

Maq wrote:

1: Sack up and try some online multiplayer.

Yes, if I'm playing, and losing but still having fun, then anyone can do it. I have a 3 day weekend this weekend, planning on doing a lot of MP.

If anyone on my friends list catches me on over the weekend, we must team up for some 2v2, 3v3 or 4v4 whichever we can get running.

checkm-8 wrote:

Attention EriktheRead, Sinnkwater, Tomaytohead, MonoCheli, and Xeknos. I am about to friend you up for comp stomps. I just HATE it when I play random people and they drop from the game :-/

It's been happening 40% of the time

mrwynd, feel free to abuse your build orders on me anytime I need to get better at zerg and the info you posted has helped A LOT.

I still suck though :P

I am game for anything. I don't mind getting the snot kicked out of me, it softens me up for better molding

Had a kind of frustrating 2vs2 experience last night, got cannon rushed and lost one game. Very next game that comes up is the same two opponents! Got cannon rushed again, knew it was coming but still couldn't get his probe, frustrating.

Pretty good turnout for SC2 night. I had a lot of people asking to play. I will continue to make Wednesday events.

4 v 4 is a bit hokey but was kinda fun. It ends up being a game where people tech all the way up and then rush. Same thing with 3 v 3 but that last game was a blast. Sorry Tkyl and I let you down wynd

TempestBlayze wrote:

Pretty good turnout for SC2 night. I had a lot of people asking to play. I will continue to make Wednesday events.

4 v 4 is a bit hokey but was kinda fun. It ends up being a game where people tech all the way up and then rush. Same thing with 3 v 3 but that last game was a blast. Sorry Tkyl and I let you down wynd :(

Where are we meeting up for this SC2 night. I was in vent until 9pm est and there weren't too many folks around... Or is this a case of I go to bead with old man hours and missed all the fun?

TempestBlayze:

Depends on the map. Most of my 4v4 experience says that it rarely gets above the level of Zealots and Marines. A 3 on 1 pile with that many Zealots is just brutal on some of the more open maps.

I'm interested in the tournament but that description made my head hurt. I could never get the hang of how sports leagues work and stuff.

Following up with the beta tournament and Tkyl's suggestion here, I'd like to encourage some brainstorming as to which kind of friendly GWJ competition people would be interested in.

Tkyl proposed tournaments separated by the 1v1 division players are in (one for bronze, one for silver etc). This would keep the competition fairly balanced. The problem with this kind of competition is that the majority of players will only be playing the first two or three rounds.

As an alternative, I would propose a league system. A league system has everybody playing the same number of games and depending on the system automatically sorts players into the respective divisions they belong in.
As the most simple solution, we could go with the American system of several divisions being part of a conference and two conferences amounting to a league. The pro is the majority of you would be familiar with the system. The contra is that unless we think of some clever way to switch around players to divisions that fit their needs better, bronze players may encounter gold or platin players regularly.

To remedy that, we could use the system of the BWCL/WC3CL/SC2CL (Broodwar/Warcraft 3/Starcraft 2 Clan League), which is loosely based on the European soccer league systems. Our spin-off would look like this:

  • We would have an Alpha division, which would be the highest (gold and above would be seeded here in the first season) with a set number X of players.
  • Below that, we have two Beta divisions (silver players get seeded here), with the same number X of players each.
  • Below that, we'd have two or four Gamma divisions (depending on the number of bronze players), with the same number X of players as well.
  • We would then have X-1 playdays per season, the same number for every division.
  • Every playday, each player would play somebody new from his division, resulting in everyone playing everybody else once during the season.
  • The playdays would be either one or two weeks long, giving every GWJer enough time to set a time and date with their opponent and play their games.
  • Game mode would be a Best of Three. First map will be set and changes every playday.
  • The second map is chosen by the loser of the first map and consequently, in case of a 1-1, the third by the loser of the second game.
  • For starters, we'd only use official maps from the BNet 1v1 mappool.
  • At the end of a season, the first two of each Beta division (four players total) will play a Bo3 against the bottom four of the Alpha division for their spots. Winners will be in Alpha division next season, losers will play Beta division.
  • Along the same lines, the top two of each Gamma division play the bottom two of the respective Beta divisions for their spots.
  • Depending on the number of people we get, one division would consist of four to eight people. (Even numbers are generally favorable, but not a must.)
  • Depending on the length of the playdays (one or two weeks), one season plus relegation games would last between two and four months.
  • Smaller divisions lead to faster seasons, players ending up in the division of their experience level more quickly and players dropping out being replaced faster. But it also means a smaller pool of potential opponents. To remedy this, we could randomize all divisions of the same level before each season.
  • I'll come up with something how forfeiting will work, how results are reported and how new players can join and old ones can leave the league.
  • Note that the proposed initial seedings were only an example. We'll decide on the exact seedings once we know how many people we'll have participating. Alternately, we'll have a one-time qualification tournament.

What do you guys think?

Edit: Below a simple example, if we only had four people in Alpha and four people in Beta...

IMAGE(http://www.abload.de/img/simple_leagues5da.gif)

Luggage wrote:

Attention, all players interested in an internal GWJ competition. I've added a general survey sheet to the SC2 GoogleDocs list, so we can fathom how big of an interest/demand exists for some regular or one time only SC2 competition.

I've added my vote to the spreadsheet and put in my league info, everyone else interested in the tournament please do so as well!

Actually go here! http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/51221

breander wrote:

I'm interested in the tournament but that description made my head hurt. I could never get the hang of how sports leagues work and stuff.

I've added a simple example, hope that helps.

mrwynd wrote:
Luggage wrote:

Attention, all players interested in an internal GWJ competition. I've added a general survey sheet to the SC2 GoogleDocs list, so we can fathom how big of an interest/demand exists for some regular or one time only SC2 competition.

I've added my vote to the spreadsheet and put in my league info, everyone else interested in the tournament please do so as well!

Actually go here! http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/51221

Yes, in an effort not to completely derail the Multiplayer thread with a tournament discussion, I created a separate thread for the tournament/league. Please, post there and signup on the spreadsheet to show your interest.

Attention, all players interested in an internal GWJ competition. Tkyl has created a new tournament thread including a signup sheet, so please go there to help us fathom your general interest and preferred mode of friendly competition and discuss the suggestion above.

Edited.

Yeah, I removed the third sheet from the player list and appended the three columns for tournament, league and regular basis to your file. Should be all good now.