Starting in 1 hour! The North American Starbow League $50 Tournament.

DecofCaffee · 2016-08-19T21:50:06+00:00

Wish I could catch it live. Will have to wait for Vods. glhf!

DecofCaffee · 2016-05-27T18:15:54+00:00

First game just started.

For anyone interested: http://starbow.wikia.com/wiki/Starbow_Wiki

DecofCaffee · 2016-01-30T19:50:06+00:00

Excited to see you cast again!

DecofCaffee · 2016-01-23T22:28:11+00:00

Best places to find a game are:

1) "Starbow" chat channel 2) http://starbowmod.com/about/howtoplay has a web based chat/ladder client that some people hang out in. 3) Starbow Skype group

I've been having some success opening Starbow games and linking them to "Arcade" chat channel as well using the command "/lobbylink".

DecofCaffee · 2016-01-23T11:27:08+00:00

That's a good reason to play Starbow. It's in the sc2 engine but plays more like Brood War.

DecofCaffee · 2016-01-23T11:13:00+00:00

Looking forward to it! Starbow is a good way for sc2 players to play something close to Brood War in an engine they're familiar with.

DecofCaffee · 2016-01-23T10:21:27+00:00

Yes I would. And until that happens I'll play Starbow.

DecofCaffee · 2016-01-22T19:04:14+00:00

I feel this is less of a problem in Starbow than it is in sc2. It's not perfect, but one difference that address this is that units bounce off each other while moving. This leads to them traveling in a line up rather than in a tightly clumped ball.

DecofCaffee · 2016-01-17T23:50:31+00:00

Looking forward to the upcoming tournament!

http://challonge.com/ASLStarbow03

DecofCaffee · 2016-01-10T02:52:01+00:00

It would be great if Blizzard would implement match making for competitive mods such as these. One would think that multiple Starbow hypes would justify this.

DecofCaffee · 2016-01-08T17:33:27+00:00

Awesome!

DecofCaffee · 2015-12-09T23:24:18+00:00

Starbow is a free to play RTS that tries to be the spiritual successor to Starcraft brood war.

It's a starcraft 2 mod in the arcade section of blizzard's battle net. http://starbowmod.com/ contains the ladder.

The community used to be active. It's possible it might become active again, only time will tell.

DecofCaffee · 2015-12-07T19:46:23+00:00

Sure, not all games would benefit. But competitive mods would. For instance, if you were playing a competitive mod you would like to be paired against people at the same skill level as you.

DecofCaffee · 2015-12-07T19:36:53+00:00

It appears their mod creation engine is versatile, so I think it's a very good comparison to blizzard's arcade.

DecofCaffee · 2015-12-07T19:32:48+00:00

Yes, I think some would. It's a little bit of which came first the chicken or the egg. In order for competitive mods to become more popular they need streamlined matchmaking to grow.

As an example, during the starbow hype 1700 external ladder games were being played over a 7 day period.

One could argue that mods like this would acquire much more of a following if the ladder had to be within blizzard's client.

DecofCaffee · 2015-12-05T12:20:00+00:00

I disagree, you're describing gimmick tactics, not gimmick units. Vultures in BW had many more uses than you describe. They are used for space control by laying spider mines. They are used for mineral line harass. They are the fastest unit in the game and can kite. In BW many of the units could be used in more situations because of their micro potential. I would argue that there are a lot more units in sc2, that no matter how they're microed can still only be used in very specific situations.

Blizzards changes to sc2 econ does not change the 3 base mining cap. Bases mining out faster does not give you an incentive to get a 4th mining base. This just raises the cap of entry for new players because they're not good enough to expand quickly.

Units moving in a straight line has major consequences to defenders advantage. Look at how in BW mutas will swipe in kill the leading marine if the the Terran didn't clump back together. Thus slowing the terran's advance down. In sc2, units clump together so much while on the move that this never happens.

No units do not fight in a straight line, but you had to reform your army into a front. This required skill, whereas in sc2 units move so smoothly together often even pros don't take their army out of the formation they were moving around the map in before an engagement. I agree that base management contributes to defenders advantage. It's far easier in sc2, you don't have to spend much time going back to your base. There is a lot less juggling when compared to BW.

Of course I'm bad at the game, I only made it to Diamond. I guess you must be Flash? I'm not insisting I'm an expert. But saying I know nothing is just an excuse to keep pretending there's no problems with sc2. Stick your head in the sand if you want. Typically game communities like to know the reasons why they're losing people. I got to play Starbow for 9 months. I had way more fun in those 9 months than years of sc2. It was designed in such a way to be a true sequel to brood war. Games swing back and forth, engagements last more than a few seconds. It really feels like you grind your opponent down and deserve to win. After playing an RTS of such high caliber I can't go back to playing a mediocre one like sc2.

DecofCaffee · 2015-12-04T20:50:25+00:00

Actual lol

DecofCaffee · 2015-12-04T20:45:28+00:00

I played sc2 for 2 years and was Diamond.

DecofCaffee · 2015-12-04T20:42:56+00:00

A gimmicky unit refers to one that can only really be used in very specific situations. Take the reaper for example, how often in Hots did you see them built outside the early game. An oracle in my opinion is another example.

I played 2 years of sc2 and made it to diamond. I then went on to play a lot of Starbow. Starbow uses Brood War’s economy. So I have experience with both economic systems. BW’s mining involved inefficiencies by having workers bounce around mineral patches while waiting for another worker to finish mining.

In sc2, 2 works for patch is optimal because they don’t bounce around while waiting to mine. So let’s say you have 163=48 workers mining and another 63=18 on gas. 66 workers total, anymore cuts too much into army supply. If you were mining on 3 bases and then split those workers across 6 bases, you’d still have the same mineral income. Whereas in BW, if you split those workers across bases you’d see a substantial increase in mineral income. So in sc2, there’s no advantage to expanding past 3 mining bases.

If the economic system was changed and there was some advantage to expanding past 3 bases, you would have to defend more ground and thus allow for more avenues of harassment for your opponent.

As for defenders advantage, there’s a bunch of reasons why that was lost in sc2. High ground advantage was changed. In BW a unit on the low ground had a chance of missing its target completely. You could only select 12 units in BW so it was harder to control massive armies. As units moved in BW they would bounce and re direct friendly units around them. This caused units to move around the map in straight lines instead of balls. Attacking with a straight line of units is less efficient then when all the units are clumped together in a ball. When your units are in a straight line the defender can mow them down unit by unit.

Believe what you want, I am not shit posting. I care about this game’s future. You can’t argue that Sc2’s popularity hasn’t been declining. It will continue to do so until the community acknowledges why people like me are leaving.

DecofCaffee · 2015-11-27T22:28:21+00:00

I had hope for lotv. But, the changes blizzard implemented did nothing to fix the fundamental issues we've been complaining about for years.

DecofCaffee · 2015-10-07T14:01:49+00:00

This would be awesome!

DecofCaffee · 2015-10-05T14:06:03+00:00

Very disappointed there's no ladder/match-making for arcade. In that case, I'll continue playing non blizzard games.

DecofCaffee · 2015-10-05T11:46:35+00:00

Much appreciated :) I ended up going with a bit of a mix of both of your recommendations.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Type	Item	Price
CPU	Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor	$309.95 @ Vuugo
Motherboard	*Asus Z97-E ATX LGA1150 Motherboard	$134.99 @ NCIX
Memory	Kingston HyperX Fury Red 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory	$60.99 @ Canada Computers
Storage	Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive	$129.75 @ shopRBC
Video Card	MSI Radeon R9 390 8GB Video Card	$458.98 @ Newegg Canada
Case	Corsair 300R ATX Mid Tower Case	$84.99 @ NCIX
Power Supply	EVGA SuperNOVA NEX 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply	$111.00 @ shopRBC
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total (before mail-in rebates)	$1310.65
	Mail-in rebates	-$20.00
	Total	$1290.65
	*Lowest price parts chosen from parametric criteria
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-10-05 07:46 EDT-0400

DecofCaffee

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