Starcraft 2 Beta is now live

[Imp]

Does the Beta list the tentative system requirements for the game?

The graphics so far - at absolutel best - look about 75% of the quality of Company of Heroes (a game released in 2006). If Blizzard demand a dual core for the game they will clearly be taking the piss.

What I've seen looks better than CoH to me. But anyhoo blizzard have aways gone for kickass art direction and gameplay over cutting edge graphics. Gives them a bigger market if everyone with near any old PC can play the game.

[PhelanArcetus]

Additionally, if they do require a dual core, that's different from requiring a beefy graphics card; the former indicates a lot of stuff going on, while the latter indicates really pretty graphics.

I've mostly been watching moderately low-res live feeds, so it doesn't look so good... but the old battle reports Blizzard posted last year are much prettier. The problem with the live feeds has been that they're just a guy playing for the most part; it's not a guy playing and making a point of showing what he's doing, or talking along with the gameplay, so it's not even always clear what units he has, let alone what they do or why he has them. Some feeds are better than others, but finding the right ones is non-trivial.

[Third Knight on the Left]

Additionally, if they do require a dual core, that's different from requiring a beefy graphics card; the former indicates a lot of stuff going on, while the latter indicates really pretty graphics.

I've mostly been watching moderately low-res live feeds, so it doesn't look so good... but the old battle reports Blizzard posted last year are much prettier. The problem with the live feeds has been that they're just a guy playing for the most part; it's not a guy playing and making a point of showing what he's doing, or talking along with the gameplay, so it's not even always clear what units he has, let alone what they do or why he has them. Some feeds are better than others, but finding the right ones is non-trivial.

I like PsyonicReavers the best, he's not the top top of players but he will say stuff, and he really is a good dood even if he does get mad a lot. :P If your really interested in Protoss though you might want to watch Louder. KingHillBilly is also very good.

Oh man I almost forgot, if you really want good info and an educational bent. Check out the Day[9] daily, he's been doing Starcraft2 stuff recently and is an excellent teacher of the game, and puts up all his stuff as VoD's.

http://www.livestream.com/striderdoom

[PhelanArcetus]

Latest Blizzcast apparently is focused on SC2Beta. I'll try to listen later today.

http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/community/blizzcast/archive/episode13.html?rhtml=y

[PhelanArcetus]

Read through the transcript; it was easier than listening. About half the podcast is on SC2, and it doesn't discuss much that I found of interest.

Strategies will evolve through the beta as people find the counters to things that are currently looking OP. (That is, at least some stuff is OP not because it's actually OP, but because the appropriate counter is not being used.) They're shooting for a 3-5 month beta. That's most of what I ended up taking away from it.

[PhelanArcetus]

Persistence and updating my system paid off; I got in the beta yesterday.

I've only had time to play a few matches; had a D&D game last night and didn't get installed until the afternoon. Three 1v1 and one FFA.

The game is rather pretty, though I had to turn my settings down; it failed at autodetecting my card (probably because my computer is a Mac Mini running Windows via Bootcamp, rather than a Dell or similar box), so it went with Medium for everything. The first match got me a "Phelan is slowing down the game" message, so I tweaked a few settings down to low.

The FFA was a big mess; I stupidly decided to go with Banshees and Vikings. Well, I did a bad job managing my vikings, and both they and banshees are quite fragile, plus I found myself in a two-front battle with an overextended terran and a protoss who eventually managed to break my long-standing wall (a few siege tanks and a bunch of marauders behind depots). The Protoss ended up winning with stalkers, zealots, and dark templar.

I won a Protoss vs. Terran and Terran vs. Terran pretty easily; in both cases the other player seemed to do very little. TvT I raided him with reapers and he never countered or, as far as I could see, built an army. PvT, he wasn't pushing much at all, and when I saw a substantial number of marauders, I decided to stick with mostly zealots rather than stalkers, and that served me well. A couple of Immortals and a void ray (I got worried when I saw his one Thor, so I added a big gun to counter it) helped rip his army to shreds, and he conceded. The other was PvT, and he dropped Vikings into the back of my base when my troops were all on the wrong side of the map, then discovered my proxy pylon and finished off my hopes of offense.

I'll be trying to play most nights and if I see interesting things I'll be sure to report those.

[PhelanArcetus]

Quick review from last night:

- Roaches are pretty insane against other zerg.

- I'm starting, I think, to get a decent protoss build down; I spent about 6 games getting annihilated by superior forces early in the game, regardless of the other race.

- Warpgates are really powerful, so long as you can rely on making mostly gateway units. Being able to spit out 1 unit per warp gate anywhere you have a pylon is great. I think it results in a higher rate of units as well as the units coming sooner after you give the orders. I'm going to start incorporating a warp prism so I can drop a pylon near my army regardless of where it is.

[Poobah]

Zerg v Zerg is largely roach v roach in the early/mid game. The winner is whoever can successfully switch up their tech really.

Warp gates build units in 5 seconds and have a cooldown of buildtime-10seconds so yeah they build a wee bit faster.

I switched up to Terran and their bio is rediculously good.

[Alcibiades]

I guess I should have submitted my windows install to battle.net. Starting to think that the Mac version is going to get a very truncated beta period before release.

[PhelanArcetus]

Mac will probably just get internal beta for bug testing; this is more of a server stress test plus getting a larger play sample for balancing.

Go ahead and submit the windows install; mine wasn't submitted til after the beta started and I ended up getting in.

I'm continuing to like Terran and Protoss more than Zerg, as I did in SC. I'm just not sure what to work with as Terran in the mid-game, while I feel more comfortable currently with protoss. I'm also feeling better about using the chrono warp than I do about using the MULE, though that may be due to having played a lot more Protoss last night than Terran.

[Callum]

I know this is a bit of thread necromancy, but I came across some commentaries on Youtube the other day, and have now probably spent hours watching through more. The game does look a lot quicker than the original, which will definitely be interesting for me, as I liked to take my time.

I'm liking the look of Zerg, although they were always my main race. Just something about swarms of creatures I guess... Only just registered for the Beta thing, so not expecting to get an invite, but can only hope. I also hope it's not too long before the game come out, but take solace in the fact that it's Blizzard making it, so it's going to be a quality and functioning game from the outset.

How's it going for those people lucky enough to be in the Beta?

[Callum]

OK, I woke up this morning and had it loaded in to Battle.net, so now once I've downloaded it no one will see me and I can let this thread die again :P

[The Dude]

It's going pretty well for me. The game is damn fun. I've been playing Terran pretty much exclusively. When I first got the beta, I jumped into the ladder games cold and of course started out in the Copper league. Since then I've worked my way up to Silver.

The match making system seems to work well enough. Most of my games are pretty even. But the ladder standing is pretty weird. People in Gold and Bronze can actually be pretty close in skill level. A two league separation isn't as big as I might have expected. I imagine that will change at release when there is a much bigger pool of players.

All in all, the game is in really good shape. The balance overall is pretty good but there is still some work to do. Sometimes certain matchups and strats feel overwhelming or too easy (depends which side you're on), but it definitely doesn't feel like anything is "unbeatable" is you are close in skill level.

[Durckad]

Got a beta key from a friend and played a lil tonight.

Pretty much what I expected (and hoped) it would be: Starcraft 1 with prettier graphics (and they are pretty) and some new units. I played a few practice matches against the AI (which, on very easy, is goddamn pitiful) just to get an idea of where things are and how things work now then I jumped into into a practice match and owned as the protoss.

First impressions, kinda like the Terrans, they've got some nice new little toys that are enjoyable. I quite like the versatility of the vikings. The Thor seemed pretty unimpressive given its price and late-stage requirements.

Not too fond of the Zerg yet though they were my least favorite in SC1 so I gotta give em more time.

Loving the Protoss so far. The new units are actually interesting and the old units 'feel' new and exciting. Blinking stalkers = win. A shuttle that doubles as a pylon? Nice. I tried some different tactics in my game, but fell into my old habits of 'mass carriers,' though thankfully, they seem to have been powered down a bit.

The new battle net system is pretty nice, though I find the layout occasionally unintuitive. It's easy to forget what some buttons do and where to find them, but that's nitpicking I think.

Overall, I'm happy with how this looks to be turning out. I've been jonesing for an old-school resource-gatherin', base-building RTS for a while now, and SC2 is looking like the perfect fix.

[PhelanArcetus]

I've been in and out for a bit, but I've been playing semi-regularly since I picked up the beta.

The AI is "Very Easy" and is entirely laughable. I tear it apart without trying. Actually, I've played 3-4 AI games, most of them to listen to the annoy quotes, and the last one to unload multiple nukes while my girlfriend watched.

I've been working Protoss mostly, and relying on the gateway units with a few colossi and immortals for support, though I fully intend to work a warp prism into my build.

The game is definitely a lot faster paced than I recall SCI being. Most of the 1v1 matches I play last about 15-20 minutes.

And Blizzard has hooked me again. There was almost no way I wasn't buying the game, but when they announced what's going into the collector's edition, I know I need to spring for that as well.

The Thor is very powerful, but like most units, it's fairly fragile. A lot of Thors are deadly, except for how easily they get stuck at chokes, or a couple backing things up with added firepower work nicely too. But their size is a real liability. I massed them in an FFA once, and while I won, I lost an absolute ton of them to siege tanks at choke points where they simply couldn't move on.

I'm not sure what the standard Zerg tactics are, but there's a lot of massing basic units with a little support going on; you rarely see heavy air outside of FFA matches, for example.

[Callum]

I've got lots of assignments to do, so haven't had as much time to play around as I'd like. How do you guys play against the computer, I couldn't figure it out, so my practice consists of just normal matches in the Silver league, and doing a lot better than I thought I would...

Back in SC, I enjoyed playing the long matches, so the faster pace of this can be a bit of a struggle for me. My main strategy at the moment is to get zerglings, upgrade them and then a nydus worm in to the rear of the base. Start by taking out the economy and then hope for buildings. I need to get my multitasking better, so when I'm attacking I can still build up base and more units. As my preferred strategy does not work straight out a whole lot, this would make my game a lot better. Havent gotten in to any 2v2 yet.

[PhelanArcetus]

To fight the computer, create a custom game, then click +AI near the top.

Just be aware that the AI sucks miserably. You can pretty much make a small force to sit at your choke and hold off anything they can throw at you.

[Poobah]

The game is definitely a lot faster paced than I recall SCI being. Most of the 1v1 matches I play last about 15-20 minutes.

Um What?

[Rhom]

I'm upgrading a few pieces to my office computer, so I'm thinking I might be able to find some time during the day to try this out. (Okay... so a new motherboard/processor, RAM, and a video card may not be a few pieces.)

I figured I'd need to get this done at some point because I've been having a few issues during the course of the day, but if it allows me to play SC2 and D3 so much the better!

[PhelanArcetus]

I played a lot of games with friends, and the matches went longer than 15-20 minutes, though we rarely rushed. We often teched all the way up, so that's probably adjusting the feel of the game. Things like Warp In also make it feel faster paced to me. As does how quickly most units die when faced by substantial firepower.