SC2SEA.com - Starcraft 2 SEA eSports Community Site

Playing the right way
 

Too often I hear people say 'You should have done this,' or 'if you added this into your composition, it would be far better.' Not to say they're wrong. A lot of advice will come from players equal, or higher than you. To someone like me who is in Masters, you listen to what they have to say since they're in GM. Recently FaDe had a clan war, and I was singled out as having a terrible playstyle that is stupid/useless/crap/trash in a TvZ by the streamer/caster. Not a nice chap. Needless to say, I laughed at the comments from that person. He was a very good GM. But enough about that. We don't care about that.

SC2 is a competitive game, people practice hours on end to get better at it. However, it's also a game, which was made for fun. Never let anyone dictate how YOU WANT to play. It doesn't matter if your style is cheesing every single game, if that's how you want to play it, then do so. If you enjoy turtle mech, then play turtle mech. And that's the beauty of Starcraft 2. There is no right way to play the game. There are variations on how to play the game, perhaps more efficiently but there is no definition of playing the right way except for one way. Which is why you see all the pros with variations. Old metagame, ST_Bomber in TvZ would get just tanks, medivacs and marines. Others would just mech every single time like Panzer General Goody.

All this leads to the point of this blog. I chose to play the way I do because I want to. I won't change for anyone but myself. Some of you guys out there might be pressured to change your playstyle. You cheese every game, and you're terrible in a macro game. Or perhaps you play gimmicky and thorship every game. Don't give into pressure and start playing more standard because everyone is telling you to, do it because you want to (and to improve). If you want to cheese to GM, then go right ahead, and fill your cup with the nerd tears on the way to quench your thirst. There is no right way to play SC2, except for the way you want to play it. That's the right way.

Re: Playing the right way
 

Theres no wrong way to play the game.
Theres no right way to play the game.
Theres only Two outcomes. - Win or Lose.
Choose 1.

Inb4 stalemate (I'm talking about tournaments ya foggots)

Re: Playing the right way
 

how to use criticism to fail 101.

Re: Playing the right way
 

There is no right way to play this game.

There is a right way to improve this game though.

Re: Playing the right way
 

People still do pants on head retarded shit in GM. So long as it works who cares?

Re: Playing the right way
 

Haha yeah it's a nice sentiment! Do whatever makes you happy. When I cast I try to point out little errors people make and such but I try to focus more on the potential of what they're doing and trying to make it exciting looking at whether or not they pull off their strategy rather than saying "this is wrong".

Even leenock in ZvT hasn't changed his style in 1 year. It's not working so well for him atm but hey, the kid likes his burrowed banelings so let him have his fun

Re: Playing the right way
 

probably the same caster who my team mates got really angry at for calling me terrible once. i watched the vod and learned some stuff from his comments (i'm still terrible though)

Re: Playing the right way
 

pretty sure I know the caster to whom you refer and frankly until he can beat all the top korean pros that play similar style 100% of the time as zerg he can bugger off
I hate your style and so do many of the FaDe zergs at least so you gotta be onto something :P

Re: Playing the right way
 

I'm not at that level obviously, but I can understand that SC2, like just about any other sport or strategy game (e.g. chess) is open to stylistic preference. There are examples in every major tournament and league.

Also, not sure who the caster is (no clue) but to me, that's poor form. How often do you hear any real caster berating players, having a go at them for build orders, etc. Even if you completely disagree with a particular player's choices, you are casting for your audience, not yourself. You can express things in a different way, for example, instead of "what a noobtard, this is totally dumb", something like "play X making the choice to do this, which is really vulnerable to this sort of play, which we're likely to see from his opponent. It's a low percentage play". I would suggest to them to try to cast to their audience, rather than to make themselves feel superior.

Re: Playing the right way
 

+1 breadfan knowing how pro casters roll!

Re: Playing the right way
 

Will Rico, remember, if all else fails... MAKE MARINES

On topic:
Good blog ! +1

Re: Playing the right way
 

Agreed, but what about Stephano?

Re: Playing the right way
 

The rage is strong with this one.

I agree that casters should never bash players though.

Re: Playing the right way
 

I really like this post ^_^, generally when I am helping lower league players I say nothing about what they actually build, I just try and get them to never get supply blocked and always spend their money with some efficiency, I like playing the more standard way but I just cant help but use DT's in almost every match up, just because they are so beast and Zeratul is a boss.

Re: Playing the right way
 

Also Nerd tears taste nice :P

Re: Playing the right way
 

On a similar note, i was recently talked down about by a GM zerg (whos name i did not ever learn, his cocaster kept referring to him by saying 'what do you feel as a high level zerg about what yurick is doing?') on a stream for a diamond level tournament. I found the experience of rewatching the stream to see what they said extremely disheartening and hard to do, but at the end of it found many areas in which i needed to improve. Do I think I played badly? Sure, to a point. Do I think my overall idea was horrible? Not so much.

I just wanted to agree with your sentiment on playing how you want to, this 'gm zerg' seemed to think that I was doing terrible things by inefficiently trading roaches against a meching terran, and yes, it eventually failed, but to say that the strategy is invalid just because of my poor execution seems pretty silly.

On the other side of the coin, had I not had such a critical caster of my game, I don't think I would have gone to the efforts I have to shore up my Zerg vs Mech playstyle and decision making, as i was thoroughly embarassed by my performance.