Sententia

I don't have the expansion either, but I joined the Idle Thumbs group anyways. Probably won't be playing much, but maybe I'll see you on! If you're into SC2 still join the group, it's easy and unlike a clan you can join as many groups as you want.

These 3 videos are probably the best resources you can have for all the fundamentals: <-- this one isn't embedding for some reason, but it's the most important of the three it's old so you can safely ignore the exact builds he uses as examples, other than that everything is still relevant. For advice from myself, I've got a few things to say: don't pay any attention to winning or losing. Competitive starcraft is focused on improvement, which will eventually propel you to higher leagues but any individual victory or loss is not indicative of your skill. You may be playing better than usual and still lose a game, or be playing poorly and win. Focus instead on certain aspects of your play, say injecting larva and using all your larva before it caps, and judge yourself by those metrics regardless of the larger outcome of the game. Here are some mechanical tricks to help, if you don't know them already: 1. while having any of your units or buildings selected, you can hold shift and press a hotkey to add whatever you have selected to that hotkey group. Say 8 zerglings just popped out and you want to add them to your ling-roach army, you can select those 8 lings, hold shift, and press 1 and they'll be added to that hotkey. This is useful in a lot of situations, adding more barracks to your production hotkeys, adding another hatchery, adding more units to your army, etc. 2. you can look into your customizable hotkey section and change the numbers that are out of reach (7 through 0 for me) into more usable positions closer to your hand, like Q or T or F or something. If you're super into it you can put even more in by reading How to Improve Efficiently, which you can view and download here.

I was going to watch that video, but then it opened up with the phrase 'rangefag'.

The remix of Jake at the end was kind of great, well done you.

Fantastic work!

Ah good thing I checked back on the thread might have ended up with an incomplete podcast archive.

As a musician creating a piece is a slow process, marked by constant repetition and exploration. I play segments that have the same tone or flow and try to put them together in a way that creates an arc throughout, or has several markedly different sections. I'm very young and inexperienced though and I've done almost no independent research and very little formal instruction so my creative process is uninformed.

My ID is SententiaSC. How do I contact Thumbs to play games? It seems like the threads I'm interested in are dead, I couldn't find an IRC chat, the Steam group doesn't have any events, the group chat always says 0 people... they must all be hiding in bushes or up trees.

Font change and UI mods I'm sure will be one of the fastest things to be created, there might already be some out there. The mod scene in general should be great because of the hype surrounding this game and the easier mod access through Steam stuff.

God I love Matt Uelmen, can't wait to get home and have a listen

Seems like an ARG to me - a Game based on Augmented Reality. Maybe it's an ARVG, maybe you're making a TDARVG

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to get a sound file of the UltraBoost bumper and attach it to a speaker with a button you can press next to the picture.

Evan has a great reading voice, I would love an audio book by him.

Frustration with mechanics is one of the more frequent responses I've heard as the reason someone quit, along with 1v1 being too stressful. I'd be curious to hear Nick and Chris weigh in, I know they used to play intensely at one time and then quit suddenly.

It's a fair criticism to say the things you like are underneath the things you don't, but I think it's incorrect to say that the entire face of the game is mechanics. It's true that mechanics play the heaviest role, but having been a big fan of esports and having watched huge number of professional and amateur games, I can say that there is a wide slate of tactical play that isn't related to mechanics. For example, controlling your army is not particularly APM-intensive in most cases, it's largely a matter of knowing when to spread pre-engagement and how to move during the engagement. That's a realm of tactical skill that's not super affected by mechanical ability. Also, committing a counter-attack mid-battle is not very APM-intensive, it requires usually no more than 2-3 clicks, but it does require the ability to think clearly and multitask in the moment of conflict.

It's true that the difficulty of mechanics involved throws some people off, I think that's even something Chris talked about during the Idle Thumbs casts when SC2 was coming out, something about the absurdity of having to build units and workers and place pylons mid-battle rather than being able to focus completely on the fight. The level of mechanics demanded by the game is an advantage to it in my opinion but I can understand the frustration for sure, especially the harshness of having to lose 50% of your games in a competitive 1v1 situation. The thing is I feel like people that quit from frustration or haven't played at a high level don't see the dynamism present in most matchups, and end up thinking of the game as a strictly mechanics-based endeavor. There's a tactical field that's really fun to play around in once you get into the mid and endgame, consisting of harassment from warp prisms, phoenix, drops, run-bys, cloaked harass. That also is very demanding of your speed and multitasking, but it is often dynamic and interesting.

I don't think that argument quite applies to this specific change, but I'll take it as a broad observation of starcraft and run from there. The multitasking-oriented difficulty of starcraft is fascinating to me as a competitive gamer because it's really the first game I've played that has demanded so much from players in so many different areas. There can be 10 players in the gold league that are there for completely different reasons in terms of skill. This guy knows the timings of most early-game attacks and defenses and often wins in the first 10 minutes, this one has great speed and accuracy and nails every mechanic but doesn't have a clue what to do in terms of unit composition or control, this one knows how to tactically move an army and when to split up, this one is incredibly good with the fundamental defensive timings of unit composition transitions, etc. The fact that you're forced to manage literally everything on the field is what enables this high, or I guess more accurately wide skill ceiling. There are concessions I'm willing to make for the game to be more newb-friendly, to improve a new player's first experience with the game, and blizzard's done a great job so far with the transition to sc2. The transparent ladders and rankings, changes to basic functionality (workers can be rallied to minerals), they're even introducing more changes in HotS that all look good to me from that angle. They're improving the league system so that your rank number is a much more meaningful and direct way of tracking progress, they're introducing all these changes to the feedback a player gets from the UI (scan range shown, worker count displays). I think they've done a fantastic job making it more accessible while keeping as much skill as possible, but the line I don't want crossed is when it starts getting significantly easier or simpler. The difficulty is intrinsic to the multitasking and the forced micro and macro management. If that's not for you that's fine, but I'd recommend you try again with a more open point of view, especially if you enjoy denying in Lords Managements, they're essentially the same thing; increasing the level of micro management.

Unfortunately I think that's a statement that applies to most people. There just aren't many who play traditional-style games competitively, and this goes all the way back to chess, go, etc. Which is a real shame because I feel that difficult and complex real-time games, particularly involving multitasking and an element of critical analysis of information, are an extremely powerful tool in improving one's mental abilities.

Oh I didn't realize it affected the game in that way, I just assumed it took care of the first 6 workers by sending them on their way.

Sure, but the reason it's there as far as I've heard is because when you have a slower internet connection than your opponent your game starts slightly later, and with automine both players start at the same time. That's a fine change to me because it doesn't affect the game at any skill level, everyone down to bronze knows to send workers to the minerals, so the only thing it affects is the connection issue.

As far as I know the auto mine is there for slower-connection people, who don't load into the game as quickly for technical reasons. I like both the scan outline and the harvester count stuff, I think they're good UI improvements because they don't affect the highest level of play but do make the game more accessible by giving better feedback. I think SC2 is an improvement over SC1 in a lot of ways. Don't forget guys, SC1 had terrible balance until BW came out, and balance and difficulty are the only pros SC1 has over SC2. Difficulty there's an argument for, but balance will come in time and it's already in a pretty good spot.

Chrono Trigger, I watched the first SC2 video I scrolled down to, I think it had magical in the name. I only saw the first game actually, but your opening was really tight and much better executed than I expected (just judging off my bronze buddies). I had to stop eventually because my laptop can't handle 1080p in all its glory

The new site looks fantastic! I was really curious what a 'podcast network' would end up being, it looks like a way of spreading cool things to the readerships of different casts. I wonder where this network will go!

I don't remember how long the beta for WoL lasted, but they first released it saying it would be 3-5 months long, maybe a similar length for HotS. By the way I just started watching one of your sc2 ladder videos, great choice with the CT music

Thanks so much for posting this! I wouldn't have noticed otherwise sweet free VODs