Starcraft II Multiplayer Demoralizing Tales

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I am not tooting my own horn or anything, but when the original Starcraft came out I was such a devoted player that I ranked fairly well and had a better win to loss ratio than most players in the game. So imagine my surprise when delving into Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty to play some 1VS1 or 2VS2 battles I was not expecting to be literally obliterated at virtually all of the ten matches I have played. I did not win a single multiplayer vs game except for the one where it was me vs my six year old.

The good thing about Starcraft II is you can invite friends from Facebook, email or if they provide you with their "Starcraft User Number" you can add them as a friend with just their Starcraft user number. This is how I was able to add my son’s SC2 account (which is using one of the guest account cards provided with the game) I don’t want my son to have a Facebook account and he doesn’t have an email (he is only 6) so we were able to add each other by SC2 User Number only.

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It seems that despite my strategies being fairly competent for the single player campaign, I just don’t have the speed or smarts to match many of these SC2 players online. Whats worse is that after ten losing battles (6 ranked) I would think that the Battle.NET system would pit me with players who were less experienced or had less wins, yet I am still pitted against players far superior to my skill level. I can tell by the profile pictures they have unlocked which take lots of points and therefore the player must be very experienced.

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Note that the 2 Wins were from my six year old playing multiplayer while I was working.  He uses my account while I work during the day, I didn’t actually win a single match but my son managed to online.

Alas, nothing like a demoralizing string of losses in multiplayer to realize that you just aren’t that skilled at a game no matter how easy and fun the single player campaign appears to be.

From my own SC2 Multiplayer Battles I can tell you the following:

  • Zerg rushes are dominant and early on can quickly take the game, this is no different than Starcraft 1.
  • Protoss have some wicked air attacks and if they dominate the air then there is little defense against it.
  • Terrans have two major methods of winning early, Ghosts with a Nuke strike against your base or a small army of Viking ships which can fly behind your SCV’s then convert to ground units and blast your resource gathers to kingdom come.

What I really like about Starcraft II is it shows the "Build Order" of your opponents, so after you lose you can see exactly what units and structures the person build and in what order. This allows you to hone your own strategies to see what you are doing wrong, or how slow you are compared to your opponent.

I find that in 2VS2 battles, you have 0 chance of winning if you aren’t paired with a person who is strong in multiplayer, one person has no way to carry a weaker player in the game.

-Justin Germino

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Updated: August 6, 2010 — 2:23 pm