** Official Star Craft 2 Multiplayer Thread **

Page 61 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.
Oct 25, 2006
11,036
11
91
OK guys, seriously. When you do 4v4 and somebody asks to make a strategy, DONT SHIT ALL OVER HIM!

:mad:

There is absolutely no strategy involved in a 4v4. It's a game where one of two things happen. One side rushes the other and the army composed of 2-3 players absolutely destroys the army on a ramp and proceeded to steam roll the dispersed enemy forces.

Or two, the game dissolves into a who can mass the most units. I've been going with the 10 reactor barracks strategy in 4v4 and it works well. I can recreate a full upgraded mass marine army every 2 minutes.

It's just extremely extremely dumb fun.
 
Jul 10, 2007
12,050
3
0
also, the pool system, while good, is flawed at doing division ranks.

If you are worried about your division rank, you should never play a game where you don't have enough in your pool to boost your points for a win.

Simply enough, without a pool, if you win 5 games and lose 5 games you will end up with a net of 0 total points.

With a full pool, win 5 and lose 5 you will end up with about 50 extra points since your wins double but your losses don't.

which is made worse by the fact that losses no longer show up on your record so you really have nothing to lose.
 

MikeyLSU

Platinum Member
Dec 21, 2005
2,747
0
71
either way you still need to win at least 50% of your games to go up in rank, you just do better with a worse record if you are playing less and using all of your pool.
 
Jul 10, 2007
12,050
3
0
either way you still need to win at least 50% of your games to go up in rank, you just do better with a worse record if you are playing less and using all of your pool.

i understand, and i'm just saying that losses don't show up anymore which is how I used to gauge the skill level of my opponent after a match.

if i see a diamond player with about equal wins and losses, my opinion of his level of skill is skewed.

if i lose to a guy with a very good win:loss ratio, i feel better about my loss.
 

eLiu

Diamond Member
Jun 4, 2001
6,407
1
0
i understand, and i'm just saying that losses don't show up anymore which is how I used to gauge the skill level of my opponent after a match.

if i see a diamond player with about equal wins and losses, my opinion of his level of skill is skewed.

if i lose to a guy with a very good win:loss ratio, i feel better about my loss.

Huh that's not necessarily a reasonable way to gauge skill. If you play against a diamond player who's 50/50 and has a ton of games under his belt, then maybe they're solidly diamond not master, or maybe their game is improving and their win ratio over the last say 50 games is quite good and they'll be promoted soon.

If you play a diamond player who has a really good ratio, all that means is that player is on the way up and is probably better than diamond quality. Probably means that player hasn't played that many games as well... I mean it should be pretty impossible ot have like 100 wins, 20 losses and not get promoted. But if you care that much, you can still gauge this kind of player by checking out how their #games played & their points compare to other players in their league.

Beyond that, you should really be gauging the quality of your opponent by watching the replay. Who cares how many points he has, what league he's in/rank, etc. You just played a game and lost (or several games). You sit down and watch the replay to try and learn from your mistakes; you check out what your opponent is doing and observe "whoa! amazing micro!" or "wow he expands like crazy" or "his map control is epic" or "wtf he only has 20 workers?! how did i lose??" Good players have bad days and bad players have good days. Let the gameplay be the final judge of how you perceive your wins/losses, to whatever extent that actually matters.

I mean yeah it feels cool to beat someone who's much better than you "on paper," but the real question is, did you really outplay them or were they playing terribly?

either way you still need to win at least 50% of your games to go up in rank, you just do better with a worse record if you are playing less and using all of your pool.

My guess is htat people at the top of the high leagues play so many games that their bonus pools are pretty empty. And if they played fewer games, they wouldn't be generating enough points to stay at the top. That is, if you went for optimum "efficiency" in terms of ratio of points gained to games won (by waiting for your pool), you will gain points way slower than someone who just plays a lot.

And for people who play infrequently, well helping those folks is the whole point of the bonus pool. So being good and playing less often doesn't leave you ranked below people who are worse but play a lot. But at the end of the day, I hope most people play this game to have fun, not stare at their/others' stats.
 
Last edited:

gizbug

Platinum Member
May 14, 2001
2,621
0
76
How are the online numbers for this game doing? Still a lot of people/games being played?
 

SlitheryDee

Lifer
Feb 2, 2005
17,252
19
81
How are the online numbers for this game doing? Still a lot of people/games being played?

I think it's still growing immensely. I haven't actually looked in a while, but battle.net shows the number of people who are online and that number was around 750,000 the last time I noticed. Not only that, but most of the people who play end up getting into watching the SC2 professional tournaments. The North American Starcraft League (NASL), which is the first North American tournament to rival the Korean GSL in prizes for 1st through 4th place, starts today. It's a pretty exciting time in starcraftland IMO.
 
Jul 10, 2007
12,050
3
0
Huh that's not necessarily a reasonable way to gauge skill. If you play against a diamond player who's 50/50 and has a ton of games under his belt, then maybe they're solidly diamond not master, or maybe their game is improving and their win ratio over the last say 50 games is quite good and they'll be promoted soon.

If you play a diamond player who has a really good ratio, all that means is that player is on the way up and is probably better than diamond quality. Probably means that player hasn't played that many games as well... I mean it should be pretty impossible ot have like 100 wins, 20 losses and not get promoted. But if you care that much, you can still gauge this kind of player by checking out how their #games played & their points compare to other players in their league.

Beyond that, you should really be gauging the quality of your opponent by watching the replay. Who cares how many points he has, what league he's in/rank, etc. You just played a game and lost (or several games). You sit down and watch the replay to try and learn from your mistakes; you check out what your opponent is doing and observe "whoa! amazing micro!" or "wow he expands like crazy" or "his map control is epic" or "wtf he only has 20 workers?! how did i lose??" Good players have bad days and bad players have good days. Let the gameplay be the final judge of how you perceive your wins/losses, to whatever extent that actually matters.

I mean yeah it feels cool to beat someone who's much better than you "on paper," but the real question is, did you really outplay them or were they playing terribly?

meh, too much time/effor to watch replays unless it's a game where he employed a tactic i've never seen before or completely caught me off guard.

just a quick scan of his league, rank, points, W:L gives me a good picture of the level of player he is.
 

Majes

Golden Member
Apr 8, 2008
1,164
148
106
What Blizzard has done with Battle.net 2.0 is a tragic abuse of their huge fanbase... 2.0 is such an immense step back from what we had with Warcraft 3 that its shocking... In Warcraft three I has a nice breakdown of wins and losses for each race. I could go to Blizzard's website and check my success on each map. Everything I needed to analyze my play was there for me... (rarely updated but there!)

We also had clans... Chat channels... tournaments...

I really, honestly, thought that Starcraft 2 would release with all these things. Instead I get a bloated 2.0 system that makes it hard to get to any useful information about my stats. It doesn't support clans. It didn't have chat channels when it was released, and it doesn't set up tournaments. What did I get instead? Well, I guess Blizzard channeled their programming into the stupid chat option that I don't see getting much use.

So here I am stuck with a interface that is sub-par for a great game. Fine. Whatever... Ill just play and deal with it. Then what does Blizzard do? They take away losses from people's records. There is no reasoning whatsoever that could possibly support this. Firstly, Blizzard has made a competitive game with rankings. Wins and losses are used to determine those rankings. The reason for having statistics at all is so that you can analyze your performance and find ways to improve. As a person who loves competition I want EVERY SINGLE statistical variable available to me. I may not use them, but I want them. Blizzard now has me going through my win/loss history and every opponent's win/loss history to try to figure out if they were any good.

Supposedly Blizzard has an ultra complex algorithm that knows exactly how good you are and where you should play. We shouldn't worry about our records because the "Favored/Slightly Favored/Teams Even" metric knows where we belong and we aren't intelligent enough to figure out how good players are. You're kidding me right!? A guy who is in diamond and has a record of 100-50 will soon move to masters. If you're well below 50% in a league you may have to worry about moving down. If a guy has massed games to get an icon he will be in the bottom of bronze, but he will look dead sexy. The algorithm isn't that complex. Any bloke who could look at wins and losses could tell how talented a player was. Now I have to go back to their match history and count up wins/losses to figure out whether I beat a good diamond player or a terrible one... Unreal...

I hope they bring losses back... Blizzard's league system is not a good enough way to tell how talented a player is. I don't want to know masters/diamond/platinum/gold/silver/bronze, I want to know how the players in my league relate to me. I cant do that without knowing their losses... Ugh...
 

MikeyLSU

Platinum Member
Dec 21, 2005
2,747
0
71
your mention of what they don't have just made me think we should do an ATOT tournament.

I'm sure we could get enough people and play it over a couple of days if needed(depending on how many joined).

We could do 1v1 or 2v2 or both.

Thoughts? Woudln't be hard to just set up a bracket of anyone who wanted to join it(could do random seeding or based on league).
 

MustangSVT

Lifer
Oct 7, 2000
11,554
12
81
i find it odd in ladder I do fairly well (diamond ) and can expect/counter accordingly but outside of ladder I seem to be playing like a bronze, completely messing up everything.
 

Majes

Golden Member
Apr 8, 2008
1,164
148
106
Last night I got on and played a solo match. I had planned on playing 3-4. I beat a terran player who went all-in on econ and completely forgot he also had to have an army as big as mine. When I won I immediately watched the replay to see if the game went the way I thought it did. Then I went to check his account to see how good he was... Guess what? It wasnt in my recent matches list... I waited for a bit and checked again... This morning it still wasnt there.

Welcome back to Warcraft 3 style statistics updating, only its worse because the information you can access is barely worth it anyway...

Joy...
 

SlitheryDee

Lifer
Feb 2, 2005
17,252
19
81
your mention of what they don't have just made me think we should do an ATOT tournament.

I'm sure we could get enough people and play it over a couple of days if needed(depending on how many joined).

We could do 1v1 or 2v2 or both.

Thoughts? Woudln't be hard to just set up a bracket of anyone who wanted to join it(could do random seeding or based on league).

If it happens I'm in. I'm only silver league, but I'm trying to get better. Nothing like training for a tournament to do that.
 

Udgnim

Diamond Member
Apr 16, 2008
3,662
104
106
I think it's still growing immensely. I haven't actually looked in a while, but battle.net shows the number of people who are online and that number was around 750,000 the last time I noticed. Not only that, but most of the people who play end up getting into watching the SC2 professional tournaments. The North American Starcraft League (NASL), which is the first North American tournament to rival the Korean GSL in prizes for 1st through 4th place, starts today. It's a pretty exciting time in starcraftland IMO.

the 750K number represents all of battle.net (SC1 & 2, Diablo, Warcraft, WoW)

interest in people wanting to watch progamers play SC2 is pretty high, but I wouldn't be surprised if interest in ladder play is declining

nowadays, if I play Starcraft 2 online, it's to play StarJeweled
 

Ns1

No Lifer
Jun 17, 2001
55,413
1,570
126
the 750K number represents all of battle.net (SC1 & 2, Diablo, Warcraft, WoW)

interest in people wanting to watch progamers play SC2 is pretty high, but I wouldn't be surprised if interest in ladder play is declining

nowadays, if I play Starcraft 2 online, it's to play StarJeweled

I'm bored with SJ now.
 

onza

Diamond Member
Sep 21, 2000
8,958
0
0
reviews.ragingazn.com
I love going phoenix vs's zerg. It causes the zerg to go nuts on spores, then typically techs to hydras. By this time I have collosi's in progress.

Fenix + ground + collosi = nom nom zerg
 

birthdaymonkey

Golden Member
Oct 4, 2010
1,176
3
81
Can anyone suggest some good sources for SC2 game casts? I remember people talking about it a while back in this thread, but I can't seem to find it again.
 

MikeyLSU

Platinum Member
Dec 21, 2005
2,747
0
71
the big north american tournament started this week and they broadcast live every night starting at 6PM. Looks like it will have 5 three game series every night for the next 9 weeks 5 days a week. Normal schedule is wed-sunday, except no games today.

I have been watching and it is really fun to watch.

http://www.nasl.tv/