I haven’t won a game of StarCraft 2 in 30+ Weeks

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I’ve been really getting into StarCraft 2 the past week.  I watched the NASL grand finals, never miss a Day9.tv daily, and watch streams on a regular basis on the second monitor while playing.  Admittedly, I played SC2 about a tenth as much as I planned when it came out.  Some RL crap last summer, going off to a new college, and the release of so many other games really put SC2 on the back burner.  I’ve always been a 2v2 player.  Something about 2v2 sits well with me.    Today I decided it was the day to play some 1v1 and see where I can land in the ladder.

I queued up as Zerg (my favorite) and began my placement match.  I was feeling good about my timing and where I was at for having not played a 1v1 in so, so long… when suddenly not even 8 min in I was obliterated.  I think I killed 2 of the enemy’s units and ended up being destroyed.  When the match ended, it announced that I was placed in the PLATINUM LEAGUE.  Platinum?!  How?  I got into Diamond 2v2 in season 1 and I know I’m not horrible at the game but how on earth does it take a crushing defeat and give me PLATINUM league?  Rolling with the punches I’ve since queued for a dozen games and lost every single one.  They’re not even close.  I queue 2v2’s and I fail there too.  I may have been really, really good at Warcraft 3 and pretty good at SC1, but SC2 just kicks my noob pants.

The placement match thing must be broken.  If I were placed in the Silver or maybe even Gold league I can see winning a few matches… maybe.  But where I stand now I lose every single time.   It really gets me down and makes me want to stop playing entirely until ~July 18th when season 3 starts up and ladders are reset.  Maybe then I can completely throw the match by drone rushing my opponent with my starting drones or something.

So until then, I sit at having won zero games in the past 30 weeks of SC2.  I think they need to make a mud league just for me.

  • If you were in decent leagues season one the 1 placement match just builds on your hidden mmr. So not having played in forever puts you way behind in reality, but their matchmaking doesn’t know that. Not entirely sure how you fix it besides playing and just losing until you get matched with opponents on your level. Happened to me when I played 6 games in season one, was silver, got put in silver season 2 and then lost my way to bronze.

    There are a lot less players now also because all the casuals quit so each league has better players in general so to speak.

    So good luck with that. Not playing starcraft for extended periods totally destroys your ability. Zerg is also tough to start out with, Protoss much easier to grasp.

  • I saw a lot of your match history. Despite the fact that you watch a lot of dailies form Day9, etc, you try to all in way too much. You can’t just run off 1 base every time as Zerg. I would suggest looking up Spanishwa’s build on teamliquid.net.

    Also, in one game you 9 hatched against a zerg. That is just ridiculous. It looks like you don’t really have a firm grasp on what you are doing. Look up build orders and go from there.

    You did mention that you played 2v2 a lot and your build are indicative of that. You can’t play the same way. If you want some help add my realid – [email protected]

    I’m gold league but I can help you understand the fundamentals of the game enough to play in the gold-plat level.

  • Interesting fact, “league” means nothing. Match Making Rating determines what enemies you get matched against. You can be in gold league and have a higher match making rating than a platinum leaguer.

    Leagues are just there to look shiny and keep the noobs distracted.

    So throw a few games, dump some MMR and get where you should be.

  • This is why when playing DoW I only matched with rl friends I know I could crush 🙂

    I don’t have many friends these days 🙁

  • I played Warcraft III with a friend for a long time & we both became quite good. The minute we teamed up & went online we were crushed in under 10 minutes or so. If I tried Starcraft II I wouldn’t last 10 seconds.

  • I watch the streams and the daily for entertainment. I’m just not into watching replays to get better or following builds to get perfect. I just play for fun and acknowledge that I’m not in this to be very good. I’d be happy silver or gold winning ~50% of my games.

    @Holgranth: Very interesting. I think I might do that. TY for the info!

    @Rinvan: I would do well in the 1v1 and 2v2 WC3 ladders. I was around a 70% solo win ratio with a couple thousand matches. For some reason or another, likely due to esports, SC2 is way more complicated.

  • I wonder how many people have written off SCII because of getting in the wrong league and just getting beat down time after time.
    I know practice makes perfect but how much practice does it take before you’re having fun or realizing this is just another job. Thats a balance that no game could ever get right.

  • @Keen. It is hilarious really. Leagues just exist to give you a feeling of accomplishment, the only exception is Master and Grandmaster which require a certian level of MMR to get in.

    I was stuck in platinum 2v2 with my friend, last week we got thrashed by two guys in silver league. Go figure. Still your best plan (IMO) is to dump some MMR, you might get kicked down a league or two, but I doubt you care about that.

  • If there was a wood league, I would want to be in it. I’m going to seriously throw some matches now until I feel like I’m challenged but not destroyed.

  • @Keen I took a month long break last month and instead of working on my openers VS AI like normal I just queued up, did my opener then GG’d as soon as I made a major mistake in the build.

  • This is why I only play games like this solo – once I saw those Koreans doing 500 “APM” (I’d never even heard the phrase before) I knew I was orders of magnitude behind the curve. Also I played some Warcraft 2 at work once and an army of Griffins arrived to eat me before I’d decided how best to layout my walls and towers 🙂

    Games like this should be more strategic with throttled inputs because right now they seem to be more about inhuman speed and twitch!

  • @Intruder313 You should check out Company of Heroes.

    It isn’t the traditional “gather as much resources as possible/expand/outmicro-macro your enemy”. It is all about holding points on the map, using the proper units to counter enemies, and has a lot slower flow of resources, making small fights meaningful.

    Not to mention physics which make tactics and positioning important.

  • @Rawblin

    Actually I just dug CoH out last week, re-installed it then got distracted after replaying a few early missions. I was annoyed that it would not patch the game up though.

    I do intend to make some headway in it soon.