Starcraft II

[Harleqin]

If I don't win a game in the first 15 minutes, I'll almost certainly lose.

Perhaps this is not due to your bad middle and end game, but due to your single-minded opening, which incurs a long-term loss in development.

[flOvermind]

And when it's not a knockout blow, it at least is fairly successful harassment.

Yes, a 6-pool is often a successful harassment. It has the potential to severely cripple the economy. Mostly your own, but sometimes that doesn't matter.

What I really liked doing in SC1 2on2 was doing a 6-pool while my Protoss partner placed his first two zealots on my ramp, fixing my initial weakness. That strategy used to work surprisingly well

[Mivo]

Perhaps this is not due to your bad middle and end game, but due to your single-minded opening, which incurs a long-term loss in development.

The games where I feel my middle and end game showed that they fairly weak were games that I didn't start with a rush. Those were games where I deliberately planned for a strong/decent middle or end game. Recovering from a failed rush isn't the end for a zerg in the lower leagues. I'm still a beginner, so exploring different approaches.

[Chew Terr]

Sorry, I've mostly ever played WC3 (I played a fair bit of 2v2, back in the day). What is 6-pooling?

[Li Kao]

A 4 pool in SC1 or 6 pool in SC2 is the earliest possible attack as Zerg.
You build a pool with your initial workers(4 in SC1, 6 in SC2), then build 6 Zerglings and attack with them. Since you didn't build any workers your economy is pretty crippled, so if you don't hurt your opponent a lot with your initial attack you lose. But if your opponent doesn't know how to defend against Zerglings with his workers he can instantly lose.
In the initial days of SC it was a lot stronger than now since the pool was only 150 Minerals(instead of 200).

Liquipedia - 4 pool in SC1 (longer explanation)
Liquipedia - 6 pool in SC2 (only a stub)

[Toge]

Sorry, I've mostly ever played WC3 (I played a fair bit of 2v2, back in the day). What is 6-pooling?

- 6 refers to supply count at which the player builds Spawning Pool (Zergling tech structure). 6 is very low for that and usual strategy is to build drones first for stronger economy and Pool at 12. 6Pool strategy tries to take advantage of the fact that opponents usually have nothing but workers against the Zerg player's Zerglings.

[Chew Terr]

Thanks. =D So, more militia-rush than hero harassment. I think I'll read up on SC2 a bit (beyond this thread). My computer can't run it, as I've abandoned my old computer for a netbook, but I'm interested enough to enjoy occasional replays.

[Hushfield]

Ha! I'm glad more people enjoyed the TLOwnage video. TheLittleOne (LiquidTLO) is one of Europe's most creative players, and he is just so much fun to watch. The spinning barracks and factory made me very happy.

[Hushfield]

Its the visual clutter. You don't want to process all that useless information such as shadows, lighting, what not when you have only split seconds to react.

Indeed. It's what I did when playing Unreal Tournament '99 back in the day: You tune the playing field to make certain things stand out better, for instance turn world texture detail to low to make it a uniform color and model detail to high, so you can see units more clearly against that flatter backdrop.

However, in Day[9]'s case I do think it has to do with frame rates, because he is streaming in high resolution, there's that flash encoder going, and all these other things running on his pc as well. I think that's at least one reason why he does it that way.

Actually, I'm completely wrong, and you were right. Mr Day[9] explains it himself in Day[9] Daily 118 TLO TvZ, at around 3 minutes 30 seconds into the video.

[Christos]

Starcraft 2 is a little depressing for me. I was moved into the gold league, which I was okay with, I figured I'd move up quick enough.
But I must be bugged or something, because the system keeps matching me up against diamond players and I win about 70% of the games I play, but it's still refusing to move me.
Right now I'm first in my division (obviously) and about 200 points ahead of the number 2. Stop torturing me Blizzard ;_; I'm a loyal customer!

[MountainGo]

Starcraft 2 is a little depressing for me. I was moved into the gold league, which I was okay with, I figured I'd move up quick enough.
But I must be bugged or something, because the system keeps matching me up against diamond players and I win about 70% of the games I play, but it's still refusing to move me.
Right now I'm first in my division (obviously) and about 200 points ahead of the number 2. Stop torturing me Blizzard ;_; I'm a loyal customer!

I'm pretty sure the leagues mean basically nothing. You're matched according to your point rating, not according to what league you're in. As far as I can tell, the leagues are just a fun little label on the surface so that you can see immediate progress and have concrete goals aside from "I want my rating to be x".

[Hushfield]

You'll move up to platinum one of these days. And you shouldn't be surprised to find yourself in diamond shortly after that, (say only a few days to about a week later). Bnet seems really stubborn to promote people at first, but then it suddenly goes a lot smoother (at least that's how it's been for a lot of people I play with)

[Toge]

I'm pretty sure the leagues mean basically nothing. You're matched according to your point rating, not according to what league you're in. As far as I can tell, the leagues are just a fun little label on the surface so that you can see immediate progress and have concrete goals aside from "I want my rating to be x".

- I agree. It seems to be loosely based on ELO rating, only that players start at 0 points and can't go lower. Points thus appear from nothing. I wonder how this inflates point rankings over time.

Oh yeah, fun site to check your global ranking
http://sc2ranks.com/

[MountainGo]

Points thus appear from nothing. I wonder how this inflates point rankings over time.

I've been wondering that myself, particularly with the bonus point system. Does anyone know of any good posts or articles analyzing this? My best guess is that rankings will not inflate over time. Essentially, once your points have gotten up to your true skill and leveled off, bonus points will simply push your rating a little higher than it should be, but playing matches will bring it back down. You could probably abuse the system by having two accounts, one of which you only play when you have enough bonus points stocked up that you know you'll double your reward on every win. But people generally won't do that since you'd have to buy another copy of the game.

Oh yeah, fun site to check your global ranking
http://sc2ranks.com/

Cool, I hadn't seen that before. I'm ranked 17,762nd in the world, yay!

[schilds]

I get the feeling that the points we see are also fluff (and are just used to place us within our divisions).

[edit] So no one is in the oceania/se-asia region? I thought it might be fun to make a 2v2 team, I'm feeling kind of lonely on b.net. Stupid Blizz, what made them decide region locking was a good idea .