Void Rays make a lot of sense 1) They are strong in the campaign 2) They hit air and ground (unlike the phoenix and oracle) 3) They don't require the fleet beacon (unlike the carrier and tempest)
Nobody said they're bad. The fact they're good is why it's such a groanfest seeing them over and over. The predictable fallback option. This is pretty universally known.
I've loved watching Lowko evolve as he casts more of these viewer games. Lowko in the beginning: "Well, it's not the best plan but I guess I can see why you went for it, nice try!" Lowko now: "YOUR STRATS ARE BAD AND YOU SHOULD FEEL BAD!"
Actually, Lowko, there would be a great game theory math paper in how Starcraft 2 is balanced and how valuable various decisions are. I was actually talking with a graduate student about writing a paper about this very thing the other day. And there's totally ways to get a PhD studying games. Not only is there a ton of mathematics involved in how a game operates, but I also knew an English professor once who researched environmental themes in video game narratives. She got a grant to support her research that gave her money to purchase video game consoles and games so that she could play and write about them. Yeah, that was when I realized that I had gone into the wrong line of academia....
I am receiving my engineering degree this Monday and the subject of my thesis was evaluation of strategic position in SC2 using machine learning. There's plenty to do in gaming-academia for sure. Starcraft is a breeding ground for machine learning projects, especially reinforced learning with agents (like AlphaStar etc.). I had gathered over 30k replays from tournaments and ladder to analyze, and what's funny the races have extremely close pick and win ratios to each other across the board. at least one Zerg is present in 35.36% of the matches, Protoss in 33.64% and a Terran in 31% of the matches. Win ratios are close as well: Z 34.21%, P 33.57% and T 32.12%. (Fun fact: the most common matchup in SC2 is ZvP) I would say that statistically the game seems to be in a pretty good equilibrium balance-wise.
@@PexoDM That is the coolest thesis! Thank you for sharing your amazingly interesting work. Awesome stuff! Is this thesis going to be available anywhere? Often some schools keeps a repository of them somewhere. Or maybe some or all of it got published in a journal. I would love to read it! And congratulations on the degree!
@@kalitor Yeah I will be writing up an article for medium sometime soon about that. Meanwhile I'm happy to answer all questions if any should happen. I made the code open source, and given enough interest from SC2 community I could make it into some web app allowing for analyzing your own replays.
For the teching up or down I got accustomed to it by my first ever RTS It was a Lego RTS, aimed for children, and you had two types of supply The normal units supply and special units supply (20 and 4 respectively) So to have a maxed out army you needed both to be full That was really valuable and made me not underestimate low tier units
because of these viewer games i decided to try playing this game for the first time in 10 years and got placed in g3 and now this video gives me encouragement to try again lol
Videos like this make me jump back into ladder for a few days to a few weeks, but I have yet to keep at it consistently. It's why I've been stuck at Gold 1, low Plat for ages. Grinding out 1v1 and gitting gud just loses its luster for me pretty quickly.
Mr Lowko, in my experience when you type glhf before 3 second pre-game timer ends there is no msg in the replay, I believe this happened during 2nd game
Swarm hosts feel like the ultimate strategy in lower leagues. Since most players seem to mostly just sit back and build, why not harass with a unit that costs zero resources to produce? Reminds me of that one viewer game here from a while back where a zerg lost 1/10 of the resources of their opponent over a very long game cause swarm hosts did so much over the course of it. Don't think I've ever seen a stronger imbalance in resources lost than that.
the thing on the lower leagues is not that people freeze if they try to think... they are still to busy remembering the basics to even try to think... yeah recall... there was something^^ hahahaha
I got a recommendation from Wristwatch Revival next to this video, but I never watch videos about watches or anything like that. I don't think it's a coincidence that you get these recommendations when you watch a video from Lowko. Very funny.
not sure that Serral watches these videos, but players like Has or ByuN, maybe Reynor (not sure which other pro players tend to play non-standard games)? what better way to find some new and never before seen strategies than watching couple lower level people trying to pull off something crazy and then executing it with their skill
How did "classic" get an extra 400 minerals at 5:48? They didn't cancel any units or research or building. They only had 290 minerals so they couldn't build a nexus, then all of the sudden they had 690?
@@LowkoTV For real? Then I'll try that soon xD I was actually 100% sure that it wouldn't appear because I've never seen it in my games. But good to know ^^
Ok question for @LowkoTV, in that second game, where the zerg did a full wall with spines, you raged that the toss was going to go voidrays. My question is, if voidrays are a bad choice here, what is the correct choice? Stalkers with blink to bypass the wall?
Why would you bypass the wall if you can take all the bases in the world and tech up, periodically scouting the Zerg with hallucinations. There's no reason to kick the turtle, just starve Zerg of resources, harass them with oracles and make them attack into you. If they don't want to leave their base at all, then imagine you're playing Zero Hour mission (as the enemy), and send wave after wave of zealots until you run out of money and tap out.
if it flies or can shoot across the map, it is a good HoMM3 unit that deserves to be rushed. Black Dragons? Manticores? Medusas? Harpies? Beholders? yes please
OK... just had to leave a comment in regards to the first game. Well, more of a question really. How on God's red Char are these two players in PLATINUM? How? Boggles the mind that they're in platinum when they play as fresh bronze noobs. Did they buy their accounts? Did they pay someone to play for them? Like... for real. I haven't played SC2 ladder 1v1s since HoTS came out and I could easily beat both of them in a 1v2. Like, how are you gonna proxy immortals against Terran who can just fly his shit away? How are you massing marines but you don't have combat shields and medivacs? How do you just stim up a ramp with no medivac support against carriers, just to get all your marines instagibbed? Just HOW? Oh my Kerrigan... good Lowko was casting that game because if it were me doing it I'd be doing nothing but trashtalk these players' "skill." For fuck's sakes the last time I played ladder, people knew how to play the game properly in GOLD league! GOLD! Has the quality of players just dropped so dramatically?
I’m thinking the first game those players probably cheesed their way to platinum based on their openers. So they didn’t know how to play after the opening. The second game though… no idea what was going on there, cuz I feel like I almost never see games that dumb at plat 1
14:10 - Heroes 3 of Might and Magic? Yeah, rushing Black Dragons is usually a good choice. Turn based strategy however works very differently. And you can't just choose to only grow higher level units. You will have a lot of lower tier units anyway. You cannot really skip them. If you could, you would. Because Heroes 3 is not a rock, paper scissors like SC2. Black Dragons beat everything. Maybe except other high tier units.
I disagree. Black dragon dies to a stack of 1000+ skeli archers. That is the way that game is played and I only wish to embrace the swarm until the number clips back negatives
Video suggestion: cast a viewer submitted game with a heartrate machine attached. + turn on yohr cam, i think the facial expression will make it even more entertaining and fun
Second game, I have the feeling [BARCODE] was used to players saying glhf at the beginning of the match, and he had "u2" cued up to go. But when nothing was said by Professor, they were going to erase the "u2" but accidentally sent it instead. I have that feeling, because that's the sort of thing I might do, and then I'd spend the next 10 minutes explaining to my opponent what happened so that I didn't come off as rude or crazy. And then I would lose the game.
Actually the first 3 seconds countdown at the beginning of the match is simply not recorded to the replay. So if anyone drops gl hf during that countdown it will not be saved.
Lowko saying how carriers are the best units to put out. Ones that can be countered. Immediate thought was "ghosts" because only micro-ing a high Templar with feedback can you counter ghosts. Then I remembered, oh right, classic is protoss.
I was hoping Professor could bait the skytoss into attacking exposed swarm hosts while having burrowed hydralisks pop up from underneath but I don't think even Serral could pull that off, considering how underutilized Burrow is.
I wish the messages said during the countdown were saved in the replay, could easily make it work like the game was paused and the messages get vomited out all at once... But instead the messages are just not saved so you get people replying to nothing or looking like they're rude and not saying things. xD
Turns out that if you say anything during the countdown of 3 seconds before the start of the game, it won't appear in the replay, so our protoss barcode can say "u2" without being that stupid (although he is protoss, so who knows)
I think the guy saying "you too" could be in response to a glhf, as I'm pretty sure anything said during the countdown into a game isn't transferred to the replay therefore we wouldn't know
@Lowko we are really only playing against ourselves so I wonder: are you having a hard time lately because you’re losing or not playing the way/making the progress you know you can?
Hi Lowko I'm in low Diamond and it triggers me when I loose to protoss opponents, that don't know they can heal their buildings with the sheils battery and target things. It hurts me