My love-hate relationship with Starcraft 2 continues to
develop.
I’ve now reached the “gold league,” which, I suppose,
indicates not that I’ve gotten any better (I’ve improved marginally, if at all)
but instead that I’ve played enough to, in some way, merit rewarding. The alchemy of how progress occurs in
Starcraft 2 leagues, how a mid-range silver play becomes a gold player, totally
eludes me, but I’ve been told by friends more acquainted with (and better at
navigating) Starcraft 2’s systems than I that it’s at least partly related to
the amount I play. I doubt that I could
ever play enough to warrant Master League status, but gold, apparently, is a
pretty low bar: I’ve played at most thirty matches since the game came out over
a month ago, less than an average of one match per day. I’m honestly surprised that I even made
silver, especially given how sloppy my openings and follow-ups are.
But left to my own devices, I’ve begun to explore explosive
late-game 1v1 strategies that, generally, should not actually work. They’re strategies of permission, tactics
that emerge from long-form mistakes made by foes. The most recent one involved the construction
of an elaborate fleet of warships, a pop-capped coterie of carriers, void rays
and zealots collectively rolling over the map in a massive ball of ceramic
armor and shielding. This ungainly mass
shredded everything in its path, even without the presence of a mothership
(which I understand is quite fashionable again, thanks to the ubiquitous Protoss
mothership core, a must for any Protoss player, regardless of their stance on
air units.
I understand, both academically and fundamentally, how
reaching a moment like that is absolutely a failure on my part. If I can’t win a game by the time I’ve capped
out my population, I’m doing something wrong.
But the scope of my army, and the experimentation that the protracted
game permitted me, were both pleasant. I
got a chance to see how carriers work in this new structure. I had opportunities to see how well void rays
can do against stalkers when they turn on their “bonus against armored targets”
ability (hint: it’s incredibly good). I
even had a few chances to see what limited number stand-up fights between oracles
and stalkers are like (you need around two stalkers to one oracle, and even
then it’s quite close).
These moments, even though they’re not sexy or exciting, are
important to Starcraft 2. Not because
they’re earth shattering moments in games, or because they represent exemplary
play. Quite the opposite: each part of
the game I’ve mentioned up until now represents me doing something
fundamentally wrong, something players should not be doing. In fact, there’s only one thing I did right
during that entire game: a gambit where I ran my entire fleet of void rays to
an enemy expansion with my mothership core, then teleported my fleet back to
base once it came under attack from a superior force, at the very instant of
the enemy expansion’s destruction. Aside
from that lone moment of competence, I was mostly fumbling about,
experimenting. But, in Starcraft 2 as in
life, that’s an important part of the process of play.
Because while I did a bunch of absolutely appallingly stupid
shit, I learned a lesson from each misstep.
The moment where I sacrificed oracles without needing to taught me a
valuable lesson about their limitations as units. The massive carrier fleet I assembled showcased
how weak stalkers are now, relative to other late-game Protoss units, and the
void rays that I spent too long putting together flatly showcased just how
incredibly important timing their damage boosts can be.
I’ve had companion games, where I’ve used phoenixes to
devastate zerg air and ground forces, games where I’ve cannon rushed and turned
my cannon-rush into a gateway assault. I’ve
had games where I’ve done things right, and those are valuable too. But part of Starcraft 2’s strength lies in
that it permits you to do things very, very wrong and then learn from the
experience. Not in a directive or
immediately informative way (though I understand community events have begun to
gear themselves towards generating that sort of conversation) but in a way that
encourages people to actually study the game.
Starcraft 2 the game recognizes its own complexity as a
system. It was you to explore it and
experiment with it. It wants to watch
you fail, struggle, and learn. In this,
it’s a success, and it would be even if it wasn’t a spectacular game in its own
right. If nothing else, Starcraft 2 can
be seen as a structure for feedback and growth, a format for dispensing dense,
tedious information in a brightly colored package.
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