Starcraft II

[ketchup]

From teamliquid:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/11855677@N ... 893384263/

http://www.gosugamers.net/starcraft2/th ... l-and-more

http://starfeeder.gameriot.com/blogs/Th ... -creations

-edit-

Sorry I should say it was linked in teamliquid originally.

[MountainGo]

From teamliquid:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/11855677@N ... 893384263/

http://www.gosugamers.net/starcraft2/th ... l-and-more

http://starfeeder.gameriot.com/blogs/Th ... -creations

If someone put all those together into a Rube Goldberg device, I could die now a happy man.

[Hushfield]

The lego was sweet. And I finally got promoted to Platinum 1v1, yeey. ^^ Still getting nervous like crazy while playing, though. The shaking is uncontrollable! How do you micro like this? Even macro becomes hard when you keep trying to make scv's from your raxes because you hit 5 instead of 4. This game is soooo sweet. And all of my friends are getting in on the action, there's even a (semi-)permanent BNET-table set up in our appartment now, with sc2 players coming and going throughout the day. No wonder I don't get any tsumego done. Perhaps I should just go Araban-style and confess I'm going to be away from go for a while.

[Solomon]

The lego was sweet. And I finally got promoted to Platinum 1v1, yeey. ^^

Congrats .

Still getting nervous like crazy while playing, though. The shaking is uncontrollable! How do you micro like this? Even macro becomes hard when you keep trying to make scv's from your raxes because you hit 5 instead of 4.

Just getting a lot of games in will eventually get rid of the jitters. Sometimes what I do is, for my first game, I'll warm up by playing a random team game or even load up the campaign for a bit. After that, I find myself less nervous. And don't focus on winning; try to focus on a strategy and refining it by practice. Try out that BO you've always wanted to learn or polish up the one you like to play. Though maybe that's easy for me to say with 3 accounts... .

This game is soooo sweet. And all of my friends are getting in on the action, there's even a (semi-)permanent BNET-table set up in our appartment now, with sc2 players coming and going throughout the day. No wonder I don't get any tsumego done.

Haha, that's cool.

Perhaps I should just go Araban-style and confess I'm going to be away from go for a while.

[flOvermind]

I just found a really cool replay:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEV9niTmeOU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aLBqeKd_lk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ww_w7sh6NWY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOY2ve7zHb4

Probably the closest game ever

[MountainGo]

About TLO's GSL Ro32 match:

Ugh. I have no words. It's so frustrating to me how this "global" tournament has quickly turned into yet another Korean-only affair. TLO was clearly inferior to Hyperdub. Even in the first game, he only won after Hyperdub blew his lead with a premature attack and then randomly ran several Vikings into a nuke. What special sauce are these guys from Prime, OGS, Werra, etc. drinking? Shouldn't there be at least ONE Westerner who can compete with the best Koreans? It's just so frustrating.

[Tooveli]

About TLO's GSL Ro32 match:

The first game seemed to be going pretty well for TLO until he randomly walked 3 thors into hyperdub's tank line losing them and the contain he had going for no reason. After that he had to fall back and was far behind. That was the only time he was ahead though and I agree with everything you said. The first game was pretty fun to watch - would have been much less so without all the mistakes (from an entertainment point of view). The second game was horrible from TLO. The last game left me feeling a little annoyed - I'd have liked to see how it would have turned out if TLO had been in one of the two other spawn locations. Hopefull TLO will be back much stronger for the next one. TLO is fun to watch, he has a lot of nice ideas. Clever little tactics and creative build ideas are more exciting to watch than insane micro/macro skills - at least to me. Sadly, you need the insance micro/macro skills to win tournaments and TLO didn't have them in those games.

Edit: A nice little interview of TLO after the game can be found here http://www.gomtv.net/2010gslopens1/gomcam/1119

[fwiffo]

Game 1 was fun to watch at least. I don't know if I've seen nukes used quite that way in TvT before (forcing tanks to unsiege then canceling the nuke). Certainly is creative.

[Solomon]

"I opted for nukes because I was f**king desperate." - TLO

Also, TvT is his weakest matchup so, despite the hype, I was expecting Hyperdub to win. It sucks all the foreigners are out, but my man Tester's still in and I think he's going to take it all. His play so far has been nothing short of brilliant. I'll be rooting for TLO in GSL S2 .

[MountainGo]

Thanks for the tip about Tester, Araban. After watching his Ro32 match (for those that like sensational games, check out the last one in that series) against NEXFreeSaga, I'm definitely a Tester fan.

On another note, there are almost no Zergs left in the tourney! Augh! My favorite race! It will be veeery interesting to see what the patch tomorrow does. So many people seem to be believing those rumored notes translated from a Russian site, which include giving cooldown to MULEs and Chrono Boosts and doubling Overlord speed. When I saw those, I immediately dismissed them as fake mainly because (a) there were too many drastic changes all at once, and (b) the thing about Psionic ground units gaining vision of the high ground seemed dumb and unrealistic. But then everyone, including The Great Day[9], seems to be believing them... Well, we'll find out very soon.

[fwiffo]

Those fake patch notes are obviously fake. One of them says that "carriers now spawn with four interceptors" (and have a corresponding increased cost.) Hello, they ALREADY spawn with four interceptors. Why would they increase the cost of a unit that's already almost useless? And why would they decrease the build time of dark shrines and planetary fortresses? And the cursor on loading screen thing... The way it's phrased makes it sound like it only happens to "Random" players, but it happens to me. If they meant it happened to "some players" they would say that, or say something more specific like "players with so-and-so video drivers".

Some of the changes would be fairly radical (overlords pooping creep while moving would be broken), and I'm not sure how others would even be implemented (manually queued waypoints can now be set to all 5 basic commands - how would that work?)

It's just way too many and too radical changes for them to throw in, considering how cautious blizzard has been. And seriously, if there are any balance changes that weren't listed in the original situation report, it would have to be to marauders, not freaking thors. If they think proxy gateways are a problem, they have to consider proxy rax as well.

re: Zergs - Check out CheckPrime vs justfakeWeRRa. Best ZvT I think I've ever seen.

[MountainGo]

So, I've been thinking about custom hotkeys recently. There seems to be no way to customize them that is sure to be allowed in any tournament. But what about a customizable keyboard? Does anyone know if there exist any keyboards that let you reassign the keys in such a way that it changes the actual signal the keyboard sends to the computer? Since people bring their own keyboards to tournaments, this should work.

I would ask this on the TeamLiquid forum, but I'm afraid of getting flamed.

[fwiffo]

The place to ask about keyboards is geekhack.org. Allegedly you can get banned from tournaments and even battle.net for using a programmable keyboard, but I think that's only for doing stuff like macros, which could be considered cheating. Like, I don't think they're gonna call you a cheater for using a colemak layout or something.

[MountainGo]

The place to ask about keyboards is geekhack.org. Allegedly you can get banned from tournaments and even battle.net for using a programmable keyboard, but I think that's only for doing stuff like macros, which could be considered cheating. Like, I don't think they're gonna call you a cheater for using a colemak layout or something.

Thanks for the tip. Yeah, I would probably only make a few key (pun intended) changes such as moving P closer to the left to make patrolling easier and switching around the F keys so I could use F2-F4 like in SC1.

[Solomon]

What are your guy's thoughts on patch 1.1? Despite the tears flowing on TL, I think it's good (sensible) that Blizzard kept the number of balance changes low and pretty much didn't go past what they wrote on the situation report. Imo, if the changes were drastic like the rumored notes were, then it would have just caused more problems in the long run due to complications.

However, I'm rather surprised that Marauders remain unscathed. Bioballs will probably just give me even larger headaches. Feeling pretty good with the reaper nerf, but honestly I haven't had too much problem with them...I think it's a TvZ thing. I'm slightly concerned about PvZ on maps like Steppes of War; with the increased Zealot build time, I have a feeling 6/7 pools will be harder to deal with. But I think the Zealot nerf is a step in the right direction; I'm expecting less 2-gate Zealot micro battles in PvP now. I was expecting more changes for Zerg...although I can't say more than that, since I don't play Z.

Also, I'm extremely disappointed that chat rooms and clan support haven't been implemented yet. Overall, I think 1.1 got hyped too much. Blizzard's being rather cautious, and I think that's a good thing, but I was really hoping more features would be added given how long it took 1.1 to roll out and how they pretty much knew the changes they were going to make a while ago anyways.