There is a tutorial for the Star Craft 2 beta. It was released years early, and titled simply "Star Craft."
Part two (frankly)
Seriously though, the one thing that bothered me the most through this episode was the assertion that Betas should be aimed in any way at accessibility. If the beta were for some sort of program that had never existed before or that was drastically different from previous programs I could see needing some sort of imbedded tutorial, or at least an extensive instruction set. This, however, is extremely similar to the previous game, as well as drawing a lot of control and build style of other games in the interim. Similarly none of the Halo betas, or pretty much any other first person shooter beta that I've been involved with for that matter, have bothered with a training or tutorial sequence. This is not because they are unaware of the end user, or because they don't care about making their game accessible, but rather because the maker can safely assume that any user that cares enough to access the beta is experienced enough with the game type that they will have little trouble adapting to any game specific changes in the general systems.
That was wordy and a bit round-about, but I think covered most of what was rubbing me wrong.
Like Men of War, I strongly suggest that you have a look at the RTS series "Company of Heroes", occasionally you can get the entire Company of Heroes pack (actual game with 2 expansions) for $15.
You don't do much sim city at all, to gather you capture points, for the period of time that you hold these points, your "minerals" build up, you are then left with the task of taking away / restricting as much of the battle field control as possible from your enemy. If they have no territory they run out of money when building units and you successfully destroying them.
There are many strategies, you can drop behind enemy lines, get access to special units etc by choosing different regimes as you earn command points by killing enemy units.
A single unit usually consists of more than one person and the AI will try and dive for cover if it comes under attack, flanking is a true strategy, just because your enemy has tanks before you doesn't put you out of the game, you can still take back the advantage. Its less Actions Per Minute and slightly more strategy but you still want to move.
In regards to practicing before playing in multiplayer, playing the computer doesn't help you in multiplayer in RTS games (usually), the creativity and innovation in making unorthodox successful strategies only comes from playing humans. This is also the case with SC2. I prefer the Company of Heroes model as the tide can turn a number of times with mulitple skirmishes rather than one or 2 fights and then seeing your base destroyed.
I'm sure if there are any others in the forums who've played Company of Heroes, they could add or describe the differences a lot better.
Plus your "area of fire" is covered in CoH, mortars aren't always dead on, neither are bombing runs by planes, area of effect has splash damage and inaccuracy too.
If you don't like the sim city, look after your farms and then build offence units and want something a little bit closer to what might be considered military strategy, this game is strongly recommended for you.
I am in no way a great RTS player, my brother is, and has often destroyed me when playing Warcraft, Starcraft, C&C and Red Alert but at Company of Heroes we're at equal footing.
Plus just for Scott there is a shit tonne of tutorials, but seriously the tutorials helped me initially however it was pretty easy to pick up even without a tutorial for some of my friends.
When I finally got done with this episode, the first thing that ran through my head was, "Well, that was a rousing argument." Second thought was (jokingly), "Scott sure was taking a roundabout way of trying to excuse the fact that he sucks at RTS games (and SC in particular) by blaming his lack of knowledge on the lack of a tutorial."
Part one (snarky) There is a tutorial for the Star Craft 2 beta. It was released years early, and titled simply "Star Craft."
And if anyone was so inclined they can get SC and BW for $15 (digital copy) or $20 ("Battle Chest" hardcopy w/all the charts & a strat guide) direct from Blizzard. Hell, you can find the Battle Chest on Amazon for ten bucks. With the way Battle.Net works these days, once you've registered a game with your account, you can re-download it at any time. There's really not enough major differences between SC and SC2 that you couldn't learn the way things work by playing through SC/BW and then skirmishing against the CPU.
With the amount of information that's available about SC2 (just check Youtube and Wegame for more game-play videos than you can shake a stick at) a gamer has no excuse for suffering from lack of available material to review.
... the one thing that bothered me the most through this episode was the assertion that Betas should be aimed in any way at accessibility.
Yeah, that bugged me, too. A beta of anything is usually aimed at testing something specific. In Blizzard's case, they were testing the new Battle.Net infrastructure and SC2 just happened to be the vehicle they were using to make that trip. If they were wanting to test the tutorial levels, they would have made tutorial levels to include with the beta.
... the maker can safely assume that any user that cares enough to access the beta is experienced enough...
I can hear Scott's rebuttal to this already: "They why did they hand out beta keys to everyone who pre-ordered the game? They don't know that someone who pre-orders has experience with StarCraft." See above point about the main thrust of the beta being the testing of Battle.Net.
Something that I don't think anyone else has mentioned regarding Farmville is that most colleges are done for the semester. I don't have any way to prove this, but I would imagine that a large percentage of Farmville "players" are college students (especially in class).
Now that school is over for the most part, there are no more bored students sitting in class playing Farmville on their laptops.
Scott's idea of a help section/tutorial is not that bad of an idea. I saw a similar problem in the Halo Reach Beta. Many of the newer players got confused and didn't know what to do. All Bungie did was have a video that you really couldn't see after the beta started. Most average players didn't see it.
I started the SC2 beta just a few weeks ago with not much prior experience with the original, though now I consider myself a fairly good player. The learning curve was surprisingly not that high, as long as you approach it the right way. Playing against real players before you know what you are doing is not the right way to learn. IMO, the best approach to learning the game is as follows.
1. Play against the A.I. You can do this by going to multiplayer, create game, then fill it with the A.I. Play this mode until you are comfortable with the concept of the game. It is easier to learn one race at a time. Build every building and unit and check out what it can do. Pressing F12 in game will bring up the tech tree and you can go to SC2armory.com for detailed information on all units/buildings/tech trees. Do this until you can easily beat the computer and know what each unit does and what the tech path to get to the unit. Make this your own tutorial.
2. Watch replays This is very important and is perhaps what helped me the most. Do not watch commentated replays on you tube, those won't do anything for new players. What you want to do is download replays and play them through the client. You can download replays from gamereplays.org. Just pick a replay with the race you want to learn. The client allows you to see everything about the player, such as how much resources they have, what their income is, how many units, what they are producing, etc. You do not need to watch the entire replay, just the first 5 - 10 minutes. What you want to look for is what build order they used. Take note of when they make their workers, when they build their first buildings, when they make units, and when they attack. There are variations on how you start, but for beginners, the best way is to pick one build order and stick to that until you can master it. After watching the replays, try to copy what they did to start off. Once you can do this, the later part of the game will be much better. You can also look up a build order online, though that might not help as much for pure beginners.
3. Finally, play with some people on your level. Use the build order you have practiced to get you started. After that, just adapt to the situation and build the units you need to counter what your opponent is doing. (Btw, the unit you built with terran that only attacks air is the viking, and it can attack ground. They have an ability that lets them morph into a ground mech and hit ground units.) What units counter what shouldnt be memorized, just learn as you play. If you get stomped by another player, especially in a mirror match, pull up that replay and watch what they do so you can be prepared next time. Bnet automagically keeps a log of all your games so you can view them again at anytime.
Also, a few very important tips for beginners - Each mineral patch needs 2.5 workers for highest efficiency. Every group of minerals has exactly 8 patches so every base can hold 20 workers. The easiest way to tell is to drag select all the units gathering minerals (try not to select the ones getting gas). The unit selection box holds 8 units per row so 2.5 rows of units will be 20 units. - Each gas holds 3 workers. - Balancing gas and minerals takes practice and experience. How you partition your workers will depend on what units you are building. Do not build all the workers you need right away, you want to balance making workers and making units. - Use hotkeys. Start early and you'll have them memorized in a few games. - If your income is faster than you can spend, build more units production buildings or start getting higher techs. - Dont forget to expand (build a second base to get more resources).
I hope this helps, SC2 is an amazing game. Also, SC2 is releasing its tutorial very soon, though I dont know much about it.
From the few RTS that I have played, I would use trial-and-error until I figured out what strategy worked well. It also doesn't hurt to go watch YouTube videos and discuss with freinds and other players what their strategy is.
You can't hesitate when it comes to the second base. Just go for it. You'll know when the time is right.
To know when the time is right (Just guessing here.), in a practice match against AI, try to determine the point at which your production begins to outstrip demand (Use replay videos to get a rough estimate of what others use.) and sometime before then, begin to weigh up the construction of your expansion as opposed to troop/defense production.
- Dont forget to expand (build a second base to get more resources).
How do I know when it's the right time for base #2? Should I ever go for base #3?
A great question but also a tough one to answer. It depends on the strategy you are employing and the map involved. Some maps offer a level of protection built in while others are wide open. The wide open maps are ones where I delay the second base a little longer than I normally would because I want to have extra resources to protect the homestead. It also depends on the level of skill of your opponent as well. Newer players will never check other spots to see if you've expanded while vets will do so routinely.
If you're Terran, you can build the base and fly it where you want it. That's a HUGE advantage, IMO. I have not played Zerg or Protoss at all so I can't help you with expansion tips for them.
3rd base, vodka aside, is fair rare. The game would have to go WAY long for that to be needed. If you are Terran and it DOES go that long, you can fly your first command center to a new spot and resume gathering there.
Since this ties in to the concept of expansion, one common tactic is to ninja back to your opponents resource gatherers and take those out rather than pound the front door. Successfully disrupting their econ can slow them down enough to give you a massive resource advantage and, hopefully, the win. Reapers are excellent for this as Terran. Again, the map determines how feasible this is so learning the maps is huge.
Zerg should expand quickly. They really benefit from getting out there early. I recommend getting another hatchery when you are close upgrading to tier 2. Protoss generally gets out between Terran and Zerg. Warpgates let them reinforce expansions easily.
- Dont forget to expand (build a second base to get more resources).
How do I know when it's the right time for base #2? Should I ever go for base #3?
Different strategies require different times to expand. However, to make it simple follow these guidelines for terran.
Build your second base when you 1. Have maxed out the workers in you starting base, i.e. 20 workers on minerals and 6 workers on gas. 2. Have enough minerals to build the command center AND not slow down your unit production.
While there are many situations in which you may want to expand earlier, waiting until you max out the income for your first base is the safest way. Also, for beginners always make your second base in your natural expansion. This is the expansion closest to you, usually adjacent to your ramp. This makes it easier to defend. Making a 3rd base doesn't happen very often unless the game drags on. A general rule is that as soon as a mineral patch from your main base dies, you should start your 3rd. Once a mineral patch gets depleted, there will be an audio cue telling you ("a mineral patch has been depleted") and you should start on the 3rd base before the rest of the minerals die out.
In my games, I usually move the workers from the first base to the second base because the first base got depleted (almost completely) and the second base doesn't have enough workers yet. Also, at this point I have a paltry military. This assumes I live that long, and am not playing against someone actually good who would have destroyed me already.
In my games, I usually move the workers from the first base to the second base because the first base got depleted (almost completely) and the second base doesn't have enough workers yet. Also, at this point I have a paltry military.
Ouch, that's not the way to go. As soon as you max out workers for the first base make your second and start building workers from both bases to send to the second. You should have 40+ workers with 2 bases. You also want to constantly build units to attack and defend. I recommend setting all your production buildings to a key so you don't have to manually click on them to build units.
You can bind any unit, building, or groups of units and buildings to the numbers 1-0. To do this, select the building(s) or unit(s) and press ctrl+# or shift+#. Now every time you press that number it will select the units you bound to it. Double pressing the number will select and then center on the unit(s). I always bind the keys 1-4 to command center, barracks, factory, and starport so I can quickly access them. I also bind a key to all my attacking units so i can quickly toggle my view from the units to my base by double pressing the key.
It is easiest to bind all your production buildings of one type to a key. For example, if you have 3 barracks, select all 3 and bind it to a number. Now when you press that number all three will be selected and when you build, say marines, it will automatically distribute the marine production evenly among the three barracks. Much faster than finding the building in your base and manually clicking each one. Also, each bound key will show up on the UI telling you what is bound to each key in case you forget.
While I am on hotkeys, one very useful tool is shift-queuing. This will alleviate some of the problems with having to tell your units what to do every second. Basically, you can order a unit to sequentially perform a series of actions by holding down shift when clicking. For example, if you hold shift and issue a move order at 3 different locations, the unit will move to each location in order of the click. You can do this for production too. If you want an SCV to build a building and then go back to mining minerals, you can place the building like normal and then hold shift and click on the minerals. Now when the SCV is done he will automatically go back to the minerals. You can do this with as many actions as you like. Often when I forget to build supply depots and I need a bunch, I grab an scv, hold shift, and place a bunch of supply depots, then click back on minerals. THe SCV will then build each building and go back to gathering. Very useful.
If you want an SCV to build a building and then go back to mining minerals, you can place the building like normal and then hold shift and click on the minerals.
HO LY SHIT. This one thing will help me more than anything.
A very helpful strategy is to isolate your most-used production building and your most-used ability building and put them on the last bindings available; I usually used 8 for my Starport or Factory and 9 for my Comsat when I played Terran. Set a rally point for the Factory at the location of a battle, and you can key to 8 to immediately send more units, and then key to 9 to do a quick sweep for cloaked and burrowed units without ever taking your eyes away from the fight.
Set a rally point for the Factory at the location of a battle
Don't forget, when you have a building selected, right clicking a space on the map sets a rally point, so there's no need to reach down and left-click the "set rally point" action first.
Also, if you are setting up bunkers as defense, you can set the rally point of the barracks to be INSIDE the bunker. Set 4 marines and you're golden, they'll fill up the bunker automatically. Don't forget, you can make the rally point of a command center the minerals or vespene geyser itself, meaning as soon as SCVs pop out, they will immediately start harvesting resources until you tell them otherwise!
In case you were trying to overly micro-manage your SCVs, note that you should not worry about getting the perfect balance of 2 SCVs for each individual mineral patch. Just rally them all to one patch and as they pop out, if that patch is taken, they will find the next available spot and keep returning to it. It's just the overall # of SCVs vs # of mineral patches that matters, the AI sorts out the rest.
All of these tips should help you automate the micro-management aspect of Starcraft, and allow you to focus more on steadily producing offensive units, effectively scouting the enemy, and adapting what you are building to take advantage of their weakness.
Spongebob is a terrible show. It's about a manchild who lives in a world where he thinks everyone likes him and he dreams of being a fry cook. Seriously...
Spongebob is fun cartoon. I'd recommend watching the movie.
I'm not thrilled about how the placement matches work. I won 4 out of my 5 matches against people that were super bad. They put me in platinum league, and I have been losing ever since. The only time I will win a round is when the game lag boots the other guy. I know that people would abuse the ability to put themselves in a lower league, but the alternative is losing so much that I'm demoted.
Spongebob is a terrible show. It's about a manchild who lives in a world where he thinks everyone likes him and he dreams of being a fry cook. Seriously...
Comments
There is a tutorial for the Star Craft 2 beta. It was released years early, and titled simply "Star Craft."
Part two (frankly)
Seriously though, the one thing that bothered me the most through this episode was the assertion that Betas should be aimed in any way at accessibility. If the beta were for some sort of program that had never existed before or that was drastically different from previous programs I could see needing some sort of imbedded tutorial, or at least an extensive instruction set. This, however, is extremely similar to the previous game, as well as drawing a lot of control and build style of other games in the interim. Similarly none of the Halo betas, or pretty much any other first person shooter beta that I've been involved with for that matter, have bothered with a training or tutorial sequence. This is not because they are unaware of the end user, or because they don't care about making their game accessible, but rather because the maker can safely assume that any user that cares enough to access the beta is experienced enough with the game type that they will have little trouble adapting to any game specific changes in the general systems.
That was wordy and a bit round-about, but I think covered most of what was rubbing me wrong.
^.^
You don't do much sim city at all, to gather you capture points, for the period of time that you hold these points, your "minerals" build up, you are then left with the task of taking away / restricting as much of the battle field control as possible from your enemy.
If they have no territory they run out of money when building units and you successfully destroying them.
There are many strategies, you can drop behind enemy lines, get access to special units etc by choosing different regimes as you earn command points by killing enemy units.
A single unit usually consists of more than one person and the AI will try and dive for cover if it comes under attack, flanking is a true strategy, just because your enemy has tanks before you doesn't put you out of the game, you can still take back the advantage. Its less Actions Per Minute and slightly more strategy but you still want to move.
In regards to practicing before playing in multiplayer, playing the computer doesn't help you in multiplayer in RTS games (usually), the creativity and innovation in making unorthodox successful strategies only comes from playing humans. This is also the case with SC2. I prefer the Company of Heroes model as the tide can turn a number of times with mulitple skirmishes rather than one or 2 fights and then seeing your base destroyed.
I'm sure if there are any others in the forums who've played Company of Heroes, they could add or describe the differences a lot better.
Plus your "area of fire" is covered in CoH, mortars aren't always dead on, neither are bombing runs by planes, area of effect has splash damage and inaccuracy too.
If you don't like the sim city, look after your farms and then build offence units and want something a little bit closer to what might be considered military strategy, this game is strongly recommended for you.
I am in no way a great RTS player, my brother is, and has often destroyed me when playing Warcraft, Starcraft, C&C and Red Alert but at Company of Heroes we're at equal footing.
Plus just for Scott there is a shit tonne of tutorials, but seriously the tutorials helped me initially however it was pretty easy to pick up even without a tutorial for some of my friends.
With the amount of information that's available about SC2 (just check Youtube and Wegame for more game-play videos than you can shake a stick at) a gamer has no excuse for suffering from lack of available material to review. Yeah, that bugged me, too. A beta of anything is usually aimed at testing something specific. In Blizzard's case, they were testing the new Battle.Net infrastructure and SC2 just happened to be the vehicle they were using to make that trip. If they were wanting to test the tutorial levels, they would have made tutorial levels to include with the beta. I can hear Scott's rebuttal to this already: "They why did they hand out beta keys to everyone who pre-ordered the game? They don't know that someone who pre-orders has experience with StarCraft." See above point about the main thrust of the beta being the testing of Battle.Net.
Now that school is over for the most part, there are no more bored students sitting in class playing Farmville on their laptops.
Just a thought that occurred to me...
1. Play against the A.I.
You can do this by going to multiplayer, create game, then fill it with the A.I. Play this mode until you are comfortable with the concept of the game. It is easier to learn one race at a time. Build every building and unit and check out what it can do. Pressing F12 in game will bring up the tech tree and you can go to SC2armory.com for detailed information on all units/buildings/tech trees. Do this until you can easily beat the computer and know what each unit does and what the tech path to get to the unit. Make this your own tutorial.
2. Watch replays
This is very important and is perhaps what helped me the most. Do not watch commentated replays on you tube, those won't do anything for new players. What you want to do is download replays and play them through the client. You can download replays from gamereplays.org. Just pick a replay with the race you want to learn. The client allows you to see everything about the player, such as how much resources they have, what their income is, how many units, what they are producing, etc. You do not need to watch the entire replay, just the first 5 - 10 minutes. What you want to look for is what build order they used. Take note of when they make their workers, when they build their first buildings, when they make units, and when they attack. There are variations on how you start, but for beginners, the best way is to pick one build order and stick to that until you can master it. After watching the replays, try to copy what they did to start off. Once you can do this, the later part of the game will be much better. You can also look up a build order online, though that might not help as much for pure beginners.
3. Finally, play with some people on your level.
Use the build order you have practiced to get you started. After that, just adapt to the situation and build the units you need to counter what your opponent is doing. (Btw, the unit you built with terran that only attacks air is the viking, and it can attack ground. They have an ability that lets them morph into a ground mech and hit ground units.) What units counter what shouldnt be memorized, just learn as you play. If you get stomped by another player, especially in a mirror match, pull up that replay and watch what they do so you can be prepared next time. Bnet automagically keeps a log of all your games so you can view them again at anytime.
Also, a few very important tips for beginners
- Each mineral patch needs 2.5 workers for highest efficiency. Every group of minerals has exactly 8 patches so every base can hold 20 workers. The easiest way to tell is to drag select all the units gathering minerals (try not to select the ones getting gas). The unit selection box holds 8 units per row so 2.5 rows of units will be 20 units.
- Each gas holds 3 workers.
- Balancing gas and minerals takes practice and experience. How you partition your workers will depend on what units you are building. Do not build all the workers you need right away, you want to balance making workers and making units.
- Use hotkeys. Start early and you'll have them memorized in a few games.
- If your income is faster than you can spend, build more units production buildings or start getting higher techs.
- Dont forget to expand (build a second base to get more resources).
I hope this helps, SC2 is an amazing game. Also, SC2 is releasing its tutorial very soon, though I dont know much about it.
To get to the coveted third base, I recommend vodka.
If you're Terran, you can build the base and fly it where you want it. That's a HUGE advantage, IMO. I have not played Zerg or Protoss at all so I can't help you with expansion tips for them.
3rd base, vodka aside, is fair rare. The game would have to go WAY long for that to be needed. If you are Terran and it DOES go that long, you can fly your first command center to a new spot and resume gathering there.
Since this ties in to the concept of expansion, one common tactic is to ninja back to your opponents resource gatherers and take those out rather than pound the front door. Successfully disrupting their econ can slow them down enough to give you a massive resource advantage and, hopefully, the win. Reapers are excellent for this as Terran. Again, the map determines how feasible this is so learning the maps is huge.
Build your second base when you
1. Have maxed out the workers in you starting base, i.e. 20 workers on minerals and 6 workers on gas.
2. Have enough minerals to build the command center AND not slow down your unit production.
While there are many situations in which you may want to expand earlier, waiting until you max out the income for your first base is the safest way. Also, for beginners always make your second base in your natural expansion. This is the expansion closest to you, usually adjacent to your ramp. This makes it easier to defend. Making a 3rd base doesn't happen very often unless the game drags on. A general rule is that as soon as a mineral patch from your main base dies, you should start your 3rd. Once a mineral patch gets depleted, there will be an audio cue telling you ("a mineral patch has been depleted") and you should start on the 3rd base before the rest of the minerals die out.
In my games, I usually move the workers from the first base to the second base because the first base got depleted (almost completely) and the second base doesn't have enough workers yet. Also, at this point I have a paltry military. This assumes I live that long, and am not playing against someone actually good who would have destroyed me already.
It is easiest to bind all your production buildings of one type to a key. For example, if you have 3 barracks, select all 3 and bind it to a number. Now when you press that number all three will be selected and when you build, say marines, it will automatically distribute the marine production evenly among the three barracks. Much faster than finding the building in your base and manually clicking each one. Also, each bound key will show up on the UI telling you what is bound to each key in case you forget.
While I am on hotkeys, one very useful tool is shift-queuing. This will alleviate some of the problems with having to tell your units what to do every second. Basically, you can order a unit to sequentially perform a series of actions by holding down shift when clicking. For example, if you hold shift and issue a move order at 3 different locations, the unit will move to each location in order of the click. You can do this for production too. If you want an SCV to build a building and then go back to mining minerals, you can place the building like normal and then hold shift and click on the minerals. Now when the SCV is done he will automatically go back to the minerals. You can do this with as many actions as you like. Often when I forget to build supply depots and I need a bunch, I grab an scv, hold shift, and place a bunch of supply depots, then click back on minerals. THe SCV will then build each building and go back to gathering. Very useful.
Also, if you are setting up bunkers as defense, you can set the rally point of the barracks to be INSIDE the bunker. Set 4 marines and you're golden, they'll fill up the bunker automatically. Don't forget, you can make the rally point of a command center the minerals or vespene geyser itself, meaning as soon as SCVs pop out, they will immediately start harvesting resources until you tell them otherwise!
In case you were trying to overly micro-manage your SCVs, note that you should not worry about getting the perfect balance of 2 SCVs for each individual mineral patch. Just rally them all to one patch and as they pop out, if that patch is taken, they will find the next available spot and keep returning to it. It's just the overall # of SCVs vs # of mineral patches that matters, the AI sorts out the rest.
All of these tips should help you automate the micro-management aspect of Starcraft, and allow you to focus more on steadily producing offensive units, effectively scouting the enemy, and adapting what you are building to take advantage of their weakness.
Spongebob is a terrible show. It's about a manchild who lives in a world where he thinks everyone likes him and he dreams of being a fry cook. Seriously...
I'm not thrilled about how the placement matches work. I won 4 out of my 5 matches against people that were super bad. They put me in platinum league, and I have been losing ever since. The only time I will win a round is when the game lag boots the other guy. I know that people would abuse the ability to put themselves in a lower league, but the alternative is losing so much that I'm demoted.