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//: Starcraft II |OT| The Free-Era
- Thread starter demosthenes
- Start date
It's been closer to the ideal of a balanced, interesting, and varied game than it's ever been. Which isn't to say it's sublime like BW.
Incredible trades all over Game 5; what a master class in efficiency. I can never tell from year to year just how much longer pro SC2 will go on, but this rivalry has so much life left in it.
Still rooting for Classic to take it all, if he has enough builds left in his pocket to survive two consecutive PvZs. But late-game ZvZ has never looked so lively, and seeing Reynor go up against either remaining opponent should be a real treat.
Still rooting for Classic to take it all, if he has enough builds left in his pocket to survive two consecutive PvZs. But late-game ZvZ has never looked so lively, and seeing Reynor go up against either remaining opponent should be a real treat.
I havent watched in awhile and I know it was pretty much over but wish he would have fought it out or go full base trade at that point rather than gg.
They were both so broke at that point. The thing that stuck out to me about how Reynor was winning those trades was how much mileage he was getting out of Spine/Spore positioning to assert a mobility advantage over the Ultralisks. Serral would have bled out from attrition if he tried to base-race that head-on—though of course as a last-ditch effort to survive in a tournament, it's always nice for the audience to see some desperation stretched out all the way to the end.
I have to admit even as a ZvZ fan, previous mirror matches today bored me. But Reynor vs Serral was lit.
The later points i largely agree with, the first is kinda ridiculous.
The only players winning against a Zerg from the RO16 Group Stage till now have been Trap (2x times vs Elazer, the 2nd one barely with a 3:2) and Classic against Rogue today (again barely with a cheesy 3:2).
Not a single Terran has won a series against a Zerg.
It's not even really controversial - multiple pros (including Zergs) have said that the game is currently Zerg favored.
Classic just lost a game doing Canrush to Void Ray ...
I'm not even arguing that zerg aren't favored atm, just that the game is scoring highest overall in those three metrics for me atm. All the matchups have made me fall in love with the game again after so much boredom through wings and swarm.
That stream of banes wiggling through it gave me flashbacks to my time working on mobile physics puzzle games.
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GG Dark.
Hoping next year the nydus meta can die down a bit and zerg can come back down to Earth.
Hoping next year the nydus meta can die down a bit and zerg can come back down to Earth.
Dark was overdue. Despite seeing his winning matches in both the GSL and the Super Tournament, he felt like a player who was so consistently solid that I was sleeping on just how dominant he was—sort of like when Mvp was at the height of his powers in 2011 but wasn't really a fan favourite because he was so predictably good. After seeing Reynor put up such a fight against Serral in ZvZ this was a stark result.
This won't be true for everybody's time zone, but as a viewer I was actually pretty happy with the all-in-one Friday show this year despite my doubts. The matches proceeded at a good clip with no downtime, and it was nice to set aside just one day for BlizzCon instead of two. I'm sure the players are exhausted when they were already jet-lagged from circling the world in such short order, but the fatigue didn't show too obviously in the matches. Classic/Rogue and Serral/Reynor were the bouts to keep from the day.
I suppose it helped that the rest of BlizzCon feels less relevant to me every year. I had the main stage panels open on another screen during the Ro8 but was only really attentive to the one about WoW.
Good to hear WCS will be back, anyway, after what happened with Heroes last year. You have to wonder how much juice the War Chest scheme has left in it. At the back of my mind I was sort of waiting for a reason to stop contributing to them (I was treating them as more of a successor to my old GSL subscription from years back than a cosmetic package anyway), and sad to say, that was one of the casualties of the Blizzard/China debacle on my end. I'd like SC2 to thrive, but I'm not keen on lining Blizzard's pockets more than I have to, and I only have so much balance still banked up.
This won't be true for everybody's time zone, but as a viewer I was actually pretty happy with the all-in-one Friday show this year despite my doubts. The matches proceeded at a good clip with no downtime, and it was nice to set aside just one day for BlizzCon instead of two. I'm sure the players are exhausted when they were already jet-lagged from circling the world in such short order, but the fatigue didn't show too obviously in the matches. Classic/Rogue and Serral/Reynor were the bouts to keep from the day.
I suppose it helped that the rest of BlizzCon feels less relevant to me every year. I had the main stage panels open on another screen during the Ro8 but was only really attentive to the one about WoW.
Good to hear WCS will be back, anyway, after what happened with Heroes last year. You have to wonder how much juice the War Chest scheme has left in it. At the back of my mind I was sort of waiting for a reason to stop contributing to them (I was treating them as more of a successor to my old GSL subscription from years back than a cosmetic package anyway), and sad to say, that was one of the casualties of the Blizzard/China debacle on my end. I'd like SC2 to thrive, but I'm not keen on lining Blizzard's pockets more than I have to, and I only have so much balance still banked up.
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TL:DR; 6 major tournies per year split between Dreamhack and ESL. Global finals now at Katowice instead of BlizzCon. Blizzard still funding tournaments with at least $1.2mm per year in prize money.
My take: just good news all around. SC2 needed an off ramp from being organized by Blizzard to being organized by the community. The global finals sandwiched between Overwatch tournaments and trailer reveals was less than optimal. Blizz says they'll still have SC2 esports at BlizzCon, and sure go ahead and do "Tournament of Champions" or whatever as a side event.
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Biggest takeaway is it's locked in for 3 years. This year is a larger prize pool because of 10th anniversary.
Some stability in the scene is very good news for players and teams.
I wonder if Blizzard will continue doing Warchests. I'm always in for $25.
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Skins have been mostly high quality. I have to think it's easy money.
My thoughts exactly. I'm so relieved to see this happen now rather than later, as WCS was noticeably hit by all the staff departures and cuts to e-sports support in 2019 and seemed pretty rudderless sailing into 2020.
Heroes of the Storm conclusively showed that if the pro scene lives or dies at Blizzard's pleasure without a clear transitional structure locked in place to take up the succession, it wrecks the confidence of players, sponsors, and organizations not only in the game, but across the Blizzard portfolio. We still need to hear more about Korea (I still follow the GSL first and foremost even though the foreign scene has seen such a revival since 2018, as I only have time for so much SC2 viewing and the big European weekenders were hard to fit in), but I see this as very good news.
I have a secondary stake in this, in that I've turned off the tap to Blizzard for China-related reasons. While I'd like to see the War Chest continue for those who wish to contribute to it and to keep some artists on maintaining SC2, more options to run around Blizzard entirely to support a community-driven infrastructure are precisely what I wanted.
Heck: moving the finals off BlizzCon means I'm now free to just ignore BlizzCon like I did with the Saturday this year (although in all honesty, I expect I'll keep up with the opening ceremony as always). It will be so much better for the flexibility of the scheduling.
Happy to see ESL/DreamHack shouldering WC3 as well. The mood around Blizzard's handling of Reforged has been dour at best, and without any structured support of the professional scene it looked ready to sink like a stone.
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Edit: I find the breakdown of the new system in this TL article to be the most comprehensible summary.
I like the breathing room for a play-in stage from moving the year-end final to January 2021 in Katowice, but that will certainly affect the Korean schedule in early 2021. The Korean route to qualification still seems to be the three GSL titles (whether they keep operating under that name or not), but now I wonder how they'll be spread through the year and how secondary programming like the Super Tournament will fill in to avoid a lengthy hiatus.
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Hello friends!
I don't know the current scope of this particular thread, but I figured you could help:
Context:
Request:
Extra - SC 1 and 2 graphic observations:
I don't know the current scope of this particular thread, but I figured you could help:
Context:
I first played SC and BW back in 98 and 99 while in high school. Loved it but never played again until a month ago when I bough the Remastered edition.
Loved it again. Amazing campaigns.
I then bought the SC II bundle, with all campaigns and stuff but...
Request:
I'm playing in 4K in Extreme (except contact shadows and antialiasing, both off). The campaign and cinemas are very smooth. However, when I try 1vs1 against the AI to train, I get random "stutters" (I can move the mouse and the camera but units and attacks stay frozen for 1-2 seconds). This seems to happen at random.
My computer is not great but it was "ok" in 2017: 16 GB RAM 2400, Geforce 1060GTX, i5 7400.
Is this something generated by my system specs, or ...could it be network related? If that's the case, would playing vs an AI also use Blizzards net-code?
Any suggestions will help. I can even transfer the game to an SSD if needed.
Extra - SC 1 and 2 graphic observations:
- SC Remastered defaults to Real Time Lightning in the options. Initial impressions are great, but, I noticed (when zoomed in) that most textures actually appear lower res with this option on. You also lose the original artwork look and feel a bit (pylons, minerals, building reflections). If I turn it off, detail/resolution jumps back. Interesting.
- SC II real time shadows suck (they look grainy-pizelated) unless you put them on Ultra, or if switch them to "blobs" in the Variables.txt file. Also interesting.
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ESL_SC2 - Twitch
For standings, schedule, and results, visit https://pro.eslgaming.com/tour/sc2/
www.twitch.tv
Ro8 coming up on IEM Katowice 2020.
VODs @: https://www.youtube.com/eslarchives
Summary @: https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/IEM_Katowice/2020
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I'd check the PC thread or reddit if you never got around to address this.
Oh yes. I try to keep up with at least all the higher profile tournaments and missing out on this one would be bad. Serral stays slaying.
👍. I don't play multiplayer games except with local friends because my work and family commitments make it impossible for me to consistently play but I love watching StarCraft 2 professional players. Any combination of Serral vs Rogue/Dark/Maru in the final will be great.
Can't argue with that. It was really something else, how well he just kept pushing Serral off balance with no room to breathe.