How Hard Is Starcraft 2

[Niobe Hennigan]

Before going to multiplayer on the Ladder it is advisable to at least train vs. AI in harder/very hard. You should be able to consistently beat (on macro games not cheese) the AI, before venturing on Ladder.

My recomendation, play some commander games, you will get some knowledge about managing two base gameplay and making units,then play some team games but ty to follow the 1v1 meta and builds, build some confidence on your gameplay and then jump into the 1v1 ladder.And remember, at the beginning you will be slow, but if you practice you can rank up and will become a lot faster.

I would argue that SC2 is unforgiving because the game was initially conceptually designed to be similar to BW, but has improved the engine so much with pathing, clumping, smart casting, etc, that certain mechanics, such as AoE spells, that were already strong in BW became even stronger.

I agree its quite hard at first, but on other hand imagine the satisfaction when you start wining:). Laarning about some basics from guides written or youtube can go along way. I understand not everybody wants to learn when they sit to play computer games, but thats imho how SC2 is, you need to put a bit of effort to start wining and have the satisfaction.

I tried to microing them in the Brood War way, but it wasn't working out. To be honest, I'm getting really stressed out over that part. That micro made me different from everyone else in Brood War, and I won a lot of games on that micro alone. Since that's gone, I'm trying to play Starcraft II with a wide variety of units, so I'm skilled on the whole.

This is just to supplement Decency's answer (below) for readers who are unfamiliar with Brood War; please read it first I agree with him, you just can't do BW muta micro in SC2. But what exactly is it that you can't do?

Along the veins of the Jaedong vs UpMagic video in the question, and the Jaedong vs Iris video in Decency's answer, I'll add in Jaedong vs Fantasy (it's actually not his best) and July vs Hwasing (how it all started).

Prevents opponents from focus firing down single mutalisks. The targetting AI would generally pick a different mutalisk every time the mutas moved out and then back into range. Since the mutas were stacked on top of each other, an opponent had a hard time clicking and picking a specific mutalisk

Slight variations in how the game interpreted the Patrol, Hold Position and Attack-Target commands meant the mutas could concentrate all their fire on one target or spread out the damage amongst multiple targets to prevent overkilling one unit.

At the risk of sensationalizing the results of mutalisk micro (because it's not quite this good), imagine fielding a 1320 HP (120 HP x 11 mutas) unit that dealt 99 dmg to the first target (no upgrades on either side), and then 33 dmg to the second target and 11 dmg to the third target. Then imagine that it didn't even need to pause to attack, could shoot sideways, could turn 180 instantaneously, and slowly regenerated health. O_o!?

You'll notice in the Jaedong vs any-other-player games, the commentators' camera almost never leave the mutas. That's where the game is - the whole game. Jaedong's mutalisk micro controlled the game.

Even for the average competitive player, the exploits in BW made the game distinctive. For the more dedicated Zerg player, deep understandings of topics such as "Which Way Does the Mutalisk Glave Wurm Attack?" meant that SC2 feels like a completely different game.

In general, 'counters' in Brood War are much less definitive than they are in SC2, and there's no exception here. In StarCraft 1, Mutalisks are not very fast and have a smaller range. Stimmed Marines can nearly catch them, but they only have 40 health and start with 4 range instead of 5. In Brood War, Mutalisks can actually engage Marine groups and kill the outside ones without taking enormous amounts of damage. When repeating this, it's possible to open up an opponent with your harass and force him to spread units so that you can take advantage of weak points in his defense. However, few maps in have areas near bases where you can hide your Mutalisks risk-free. Your units can thus be cut off by Marines much more easily and must be constantly looked after. Turrets are also cheaper, but only deal half damage (10 of 20, instead of SC2's flat 24) to Mutalisks and so can be fought around more easily. Again, Brood War has soft counters, not hard counters.

Jaedong was the first to micro two control groups of Mutalisks at the first time effectively while still macroing well. This (incredibly difficult) technique allowed him to do things no other player was capable of and unlike most players who built an initial wave of Mutalisks and used them to deal as much damage as possible until they died, Jaedong often strengthened his air army as the game went on and won with it.

Here's an example game vs. Iris, a consistently strong Terran. Two-group micro starts a few minutes later, at 11:30. Jaedong is engaging and frequently targeting specific out of place units. After the attack projectile flies, he immediately pulls back to minimize damage. How well he does this determines how much damage he takes. As you can see, once Jaedong enters the base he is CONSTANTLY forced to micro his Mutalisks until he departs, and departing causes him to take exit damage. There's no corner or high ground area for him to sit in while he macros, he has to do it on the fly.

After typing all that I realize that he also might be talking about Zerg vs. Zerg, which Jaedong at one point had an absurd 80% career winrate in. The matchup is frequently referred to as JvZ. Nearly every game in this matchup in SC:BW became a micro heavy battle between Zerglings, Mutalisks and Scourge for each player. Here's a standard midgame of ZvZ. Mutalisks that are microed well can kill Scourge (flying single-target suicide bombs) but it's ridiculously hard to do, especially during a battle. Jaedong does it easily, like this game, and routinely wins because of it.

So, just as an example: in an hypothetical real-time strategy game, we might have 2 units: one is a ground-based infantry unit which can only attack ground targets. The other is a flying unit which can attack ground units but not other air units. In this situation, whether or not the flying unit is designed to effectively kill infantry units, the air unit is a hard counter to the ground unit in this example. The ground unit cannot hurt the air unit in any way, and the air unit can hurt the ground unit. This relationship is based on innate and immutable differences between the two unit types.

To me this is one of my key frustrations with regards to talking about hard counters vs soft counters. There seems to be this assumption baked in that hard counters existing means that things are going to rapidly become pointless to make and impossible to use just because their counter is on the field.

In games with a higher prevalence of harder counters, at the very least the potential pool of effective HP is divided between the various counter types. For example: if the counters are infantry, vehicles, and air units, your effective pools of health reside with those 3 separate categories of damage types (with the possible caveat of damage types which might be effective against more than 1 of the above). In softer counters, sheer effective DPS and HP in one area can be enough to win a fight.

To me, both hard counter and soft counter systems can result in the sorts of highly dynamic combat scenarios I was talking about above, but each has its own tradeoffs. You need look no further than a game like Red Alert 3 for an example of a really deep and fun game with a hard(er) counter system, and to StarCraft 2 for a depth and fun with a softer counter system.

These bonuses and penalties are found in both softer and harder counter games. For instance: Warcraft 3 uses such a system, as does StarCraft 2, and as do Battle Realms and Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3. However, in Battle Realms and RA3, the damage bonuses and penalties tend to be a lot more emphasized, with 75% or more damage reductions on some matchups and 300% damage bonuses on other matchups.

These two systems are of course not mutually exclusive and are actually used together fairly often. And, as I said, such systems are often seen together in many games. Zero-K is one of the premier games that uses attribute-based counters, an Red Alert 3 is one of the better examples of bonus-and-penalty based counter systems.

If a game has hard counters, then scouting army compositions becomes far more important. Seeing what your opponent is bringing becomes vital to winning a confrontation.
If a game has soft counters, the game moves to a more economic focus, as it becomes more important to just have more money to bulldoze through an advantage. scouting will focus more on expansions and harassment opportunities.

I think an interesting point has been brought up, which is how small-scale versus large-scale games should handle counters. In DoW2, with your maximum of about ten squads and starting roster of about three, a set of CnC-level hard counters would absolutely destroy the need for players to engage with the positioning and small-unit tactics the game is built around. The sluggish pace of resource gathering means that one counterpick early might decide the game. Whereas in CnC or Starcraft, a mere 25% damage boost would never be enough to stop players from spamming the most rounded unit and overwhelming their enemy with sheer numbers.

So I thought Insurgent was hard enough. Your enemy gets archons and arbiter, whereas you have to move about the rather finnicky Dark Archon in order to gain much ground. Carrier (StarCraft)s are insanely mineral expensive when you can only take a limited number of expands (taking a whopping total of 550 minerals fully loaded), they die often even with x/3/3 armour because they only have 150 shield HP, and your opponent constantly spams scouts out of their bases.

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