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STEAM- Announcements & Updates 2011 Edition
- Thread starter ClovingWestbrook
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Vincent Alexander
Member
To get this shite back on topic a bit...I think I'm finally going to pick up DoW: Retribution. I hope there are a decent amount of people playing it online.
After the first note, my ass was laughing.SapientWolf said:
SapientWolf
Trucker Sexologist
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2A3j0zWpTs0Drkirby said:
Are the prequels eventually getting taken offline? That would certainly boost the community in Retribution.Vincent Alexander said:
Twig said:
SupCom has less responsive units that take much longer to die. He thinks that having way more units pumping out continuously means it's a faster paced game since you can have a large army smash for a really long time. I think what he meant to say was larger scale battles.
SC2 is capped at 200 food (much fewer than 200 units) for a reason. You have to make decisions about what your composition is going to be, and balance of workers vs army, because you know you are limited by 200 food. Making these decisions based on what you've seen your enemy has is one of the many skills competitive players must hone, and something one can appreciate when spectating. Also, smaller armies means you can put more effort into controlling them providing the opportunity for cool micro and good positioning to win battles you probably shouldn't. With more stuff, you tend to just attack move everything and hope you have more, which isn't as exciting to spectate. Basically, SC2 was meant to be very intense for players since there is little margin for error in precise control, and meant to be exciting for spectators because the influence of micro means you rarely know the outcome of a battle until it's over, and usually you can see one player clearly out micro the other to earn his victory, and appreciate the difficulty of doing it.
Twig, LovingSteam: Take it to PM for Christ's sake, this isn't a petty arguments thread.
Anyway, is there in inverse law of Easter deals going on, the bigger the DD store the worse sale?
The EA UK store has 50% off everything (And £10 off £25 on top if you register your email for a Bulletstorm competition), the Ubi UK store has up to 50% off actual games but not their DD section as yet. Gamersgate have an Easter sale, as do Greenmangaming.
Of course D2D have a month long sale going on so have ignored Easter essentially, but Steam lays on Metro 2033, which we know will be on Gamersgate for cheaper (And has been on Steam cheaper too)! Very unusual to have Steam as the odd one out for deals for once, trumped from all corners.
Anyway, is there in inverse law of Easter deals going on, the bigger the DD store the worse sale?
The EA UK store has 50% off everything (And £10 off £25 on top if you register your email for a Bulletstorm competition), the Ubi UK store has up to 50% off actual games but not their DD section as yet. Gamersgate have an Easter sale, as do Greenmangaming.
Of course D2D have a month long sale going on so have ignored Easter essentially, but Steam lays on Metro 2033, which we know will be on Gamersgate for cheaper (And has been on Steam cheaper too)! Very unusual to have Steam as the odd one out for deals for once, trumped from all corners.
SapientWolf
Trucker Sexologist
So true. I'm glad that you and I both agree that World in Conflict is the best RTS ever made.Zzoram said:
Vincent Alexander
Member
Completely agree. I still think unit composition is important in SupCom2, but you don't care about it as much because it is so easy to rebuild. With limited resources in Starcraft 2, it actually hurts to watch your units get wiped out. I know I cringe when I lose an Ultralisk.Zzoram said:
Actually, all of this talk of Starcraft2 is making me want to play it again. Think I'll fire it up.
Twig said:
Most RTS games now are designed to be easy to play, requiring minimal player input and automating a lot of unit actions and base management so everyone can feel competent.
Well, the gist of it is that SC2 is designed to be exciting to watch and nerve wracking to play. When you play badly, you feel like you're playing awful and it will look like you were playing even worse. When you play well relative to your usual play, you feel great because you feel like you got better.
Not everyone likes this feeling. Many people are turned off by it, just as they would be turned off by any intense high pressure solo competition. I guess it's a matter of, do you like games that just make you feel good, or do you like games that make you earn that feeling. It comes much less often, but when it does, it's so good.
SapientWolf said:
It's not though, because it's too singularly focused on your squad. RTS always involved a balance and management of both combat and economy at once, that's what makes it a unique genre and not Ghost Recon or Sim City. The more modern RTS have tried to move towards pure combat, the closer they get to being more like Ghost Recon, or an Action RPG, just controlling a very small squad of units and having nothing else to worry about. That's not RTS anymore, it's action tactics or action RPG or something.
SC2 is great because it has that element, but it still demands that you balance an economy and protect workers and capture territory for resources and build production facilities and place them intelligently to manage unit movement in your base. However, due to the worker mechanic, your income is highly reliant on a steadily building number of workers until some ideal number for your particular intention (one base, two base, long map splitting game, etc). But workers rebuild rather slowly, so economic harass can be devastating. Workers are also weak shits that die super easily. So you end up having to closely watch and perfectly control your army and manage positioning for high ground and choke points and surface area and flanking, but simultaneously respond instantly to any threat to your workers, since an even army trade but losing 25 workers is probably a lost game. Often your armies will engage at the same time that some Dark Templar or Banshee or Banelings go for your workers. The intensity of having to control your units so you don't lose your army too one-sidedly, and protecting your workers so that you aren't left incapable of reinforcing your army, at the same time, is just something not offered by less multitask demanding games. Then you consider that often your workers at 2 or 3 bases may be attacked simultaneously AND there is an army coming at you. It's just a level of frantic intensity that you can't replicate in a game that doesn't demand a lot of multitasking.
I can't remember who said it best, but the ultimate resource in Starcraft is attention. How well you split your attention among the various demands, and how good you get at paying attention to multiple things at once, determines how good of a player you become. This dynamic just doesn't exist when you have very few things to pay attention to. You can appreciate good play by experiencing how hard it is to actually multitask. Humans are terrible at multitasking. Yet when you watch great players in action, they will do 3 prong attacks, and great players will amazingly defend 3 prong attacks with nearly instant reaction time. When I play, if a DT slipped into my worker line in a battle, I wouldn't notice. I'd win or lose my battle, go back to my base to make some more stuff, and notice I had no workers or money. A better player starts running his workers before the 1st one gets hit, even in the middle of controlling a battle. I can appreciate how amazing that is because it's so hard for me to think about more than 1 thing at a time, nevermind bounce around controlling different things second to second.
Yeah, maybe, but I can play a game like Super Meat Boy, die a million times, and never be actually frustrated. I play Starcraft once against a human player who's even slightly better than me, and it's the single most frustrating thing I've experienced in gaming.Zzoram said:
WoW arenas come close, but don't quite reach that level of frustration. Probably has something to do with the fact that I know the game is unbalanced as all fuck, whereas, by almost all accounts, Starcraft is not.
Hey guys, curious question... is it possible to somehow attain Witcher 2 on steam in Australia? I've been watching some trailers and it certainly looks very good and I'm getting hyped but I noticed it isn't in the steam store only the trailer and that says not available in my region. Curious if there's some sort of workaround
Twig said:
In Super Meat Boy you can blame the game, or you don't have to worry because you're supposed to die a lot to figure out levels.
In Starcraft, you generally can't blame the game, you lose because you play worse than the other guy. This is a big ego hit that many people can't handle. There is no one to blame but yourself for your failure, and that's just not something people are raised to think these days. In many games, when someone beats you, you feel like they're really good. In Starcraft, when someone beats you, you feel like you're really bad. It's strange. It's a game for people who like to rise to challenges by bettering themselves. People who keep playing often do so because they want to get better. There is a nearly infinite skill ceiling so everyone can always be getting better and still never be perfect. People who stop are frustrated by how bad the game makes them feel, because they can never be on top and they can't handle being below average.
It's the opposite, actually. In Super Meat Boy, I blame myself for not being good enough. I know exactly what it is I need to do to win. I just need to get good enough to do it.Zzoram said:
In Starcraft, I have quite literally no idea what it is I'm supposed to do to win against people who are better than me. I do feel like I'm bad, but I don't blame myself for being bad. I blame the game for being shit at communicating what I'm supposed to do.
Castor Krieg
Banned
Twig said:
Do you know the "Replay" feature? It allows you to see your progress, and your opponents at the same time, see his build order, his strategy and unit counters. Before that you should analyze the race you are playing - build orders, units, upgrades, optimal playstyle.
That's what 90% of RTS improvement comes from - you lose, you analyze, you learn (hopefully). People are better than you because they played other RTS games before, and you didn't. They played way more S2 than you. Being a "better gamer" has nothing to do with it in 90% of cases. It's simply time invested in the game.
Seems to me you are complaining you need to spend time to be good at Starcraft 2. RTS games were always like that, this is not SMB. SMB is easy for people with good reflexes, which is not something SMB-related.
Twig said:
I felt the same way too. Then I found TeamLiquid and the Liquipedia (wiki guide). The community forums help a lot too. There are a lot of whiny new people you need to ignore (usually have defeatist attitude), and it's an intimidating world to enter, but it's really not that scary.
Very minor things like a build order can dramatically improve your play. Picking a race is also kinda really important to getting good. You get good with repetition, but with Random there are 9 possible match ups to play instead of 3 so you get 1/3 the practice at any one of them, and they're all dramatically different so what you learn for 1 race is likely bad for another race, and you pretty much can't learn anything.
Learning building/unit hotkeys is really not hard at all. It literally just takes a couple games where when you go to click something, hover for a second and read what the hotkey is. Next time don't move your cursor to the button, press the hotkey. Congratulations, you're magically twice as fast at everything now.
The key to getting better is narrowing your focus. Pick a specific thing you want to improve (ie. learning hotkeys, constantly making workers but with none queued etc.) and just play a lot of games practicing those things. You may win or lose a lot, but that doesn't matter. You are learning skills that you can then further build upon. Getting better is a gradual process, but you have to practice with purpose, work on some specific skill or set of skills. Playing randomly every time won't make you improve that much.
As mentioned above, watching replays helps tremendously. You lose to a guy. Watch the replay and see what he did. Straight up copy it and practice the execution until you're winning. Then when you lose to something else, copy that until you're winning with it. In time, you've learned how to do a bunch of things decent enough to win. You'll get a ton better just doing that. But whenever you copy someone's build/strategy, make sure you practice with it, don't just do it once. Do the same thing as many times as you can until you get good at it before moving on. Repetition is key.
Anyone can be reasonably good at Starcraft, it just takes focused practice. Nobody is just good at it. Some people may learn faster than others, but everyone needs a lot of practice.
I've been playing RTS since Warcraft 1. X: I don't know how many hours I spent playing Warcraft 2, specifically, as a child. Always liked it more than Starcraft. U:Castor Krieg said:
Still, I know what you're saying. But when I even get absolutely destroyed in my placement matches in SC2 (in the beta, granted, where people were more likely to be good), it is incredibly disheartening. And man, I really don't want to spend hours watching replays of myself getting annihilated.
Yeah, I know there a lot of good resources out there for learning, but I much prefer it when those resources are built into the game. I also have a defeatist attitude when it comes to this kind of game. Can't help it when I lose as much as I doooo.Zzoram said:
To be fair, I haven't actually played SC2 past the beta. I bought it and I was like "oh man" and haven't touched it since. Not even the singleplayer. Except to play Starjeweled, which is awesome. I dunno how helpful those challenge/tutorial things are that Blizzard built.
And then there's the fact that I just don't have enough time to devote to learning a game like Starcraft. Hah. Though, I've been playing a lot of League of Legends lately, and getting at least decent at it, and that's another genre I never thought I'd reach a point where I even enjoy losing. Of course, DOTA is not nearly as complicated or deep as a good RTS, but that's beside the point! I'm pretty hyped about Dota 2, now, when I before I only had mild interest. S:
And anyway, I had planned to try to get into SC2 finally, this summer. In a week I'll be done with finals. Oh boy! (Portal 2 first.)
Twig said:
I watch in 2x or 4x speed. I only slow it down and rewind if I wanted to see a very specific timing.
Ya, when I'm done exams I will probably just play a ton of SC2 this summer. The Witcher 2 and Portal 2 will get fit in there somehow. I want to get better at SC2, I haven't been playing to learn much lately and I need to get back on that. Skills you learn then to stick with you, and learning how to learn from your mistakes is a skill in itself.
Learning LoL is pretty tough too, but some of the micro is applicable to SC2.
Starjewelled is surprisingly hard lol. I keep getting dominated in it, I'm awful at Bejewelled though but I'm also awful at deciding what to spend my energy on and when to spend it. It's like DOTA without the heroes in the sense that 2 sides have clashing AI equal armies, you play Bejewelled to get energy to buy units to buy for your side, with the goal of pushing into their side and killing their base.
Yeah, well, we'll see come this summer how I fare. U:Zzoram said:
I'm assuming this is some elitist jab.vocab said:
"oh me oh my lol is for babbies YOU SHOULD PLAY HON LIKE A MAN"
LISTEN. It's the same type of game. That's all I was getting at. I don't give a shit if it's not hardcore enough or whatever. 'Cause it's fun.
Spam is not a word that describes conversation.3chopl0x said:
This desire to stay perfectly on topic 100% of the time is retarded. PEOPLE TALKING OH NOOOOO. Also, the conversation had already ended. So you picked pretty much the perfect time to bitch about it.
Yeah, I've heard about that. It's just something new I have to learn. Not a big deal.Zzoram said:
June, or something? I wanna say June. But I don't really know.Zzoram said:
I'm going to wait for the big summer sale to get Portal 2. It'll probably only be $37.50 but whatever, that's cheaper than pre-order and I couldn't play now anyways due to exams.
I'm debating whether I should get The Witcher 2 pre-ordered at $45 or wait and see if they have it for $37.50 during the big summer sale.
I'm debating whether I should get The Witcher 2 pre-ordered at $45 or wait and see if they have it for $37.50 during the big summer sale.
archnemesis
Member
It was June 24 to July 4.Twig said:
opticalmace
Member
Free copy of portal 1
GAFers! I have an extra copy of Portal 1 to gift on Steam.
If you want it send me a PM. First to do so gets it. Please only apply if you will play it!
GAFers! I have an extra copy of Portal 1 to gift on Steam.
If you want it send me a PM. First to do so gets it. Please only apply if you will play it!
That's not what's going to make Dota 2 harder to play than LoL, in LoL it's much easier to escape and last hitting is so much easier in LoL to HoN. In HoN it's very easy to die if you do something wrong and LoL is much more forgiving.Zzoram said:
Sir Garbageman
Member
Snuggler said:
Drakensang and it's sequel, A River of Time. Been wanting to pick them up for a while.
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