it actually prevents some players from learning strategy. there's destructible rocks to prevent rushing and usually only one entrance to a base. i think they intended this to mean that 1. nobody will die to a rush and ragequit 5 minutes into the game. 2. single entrance = easier to defend, easy to expand to your natural. unfortunately, it seems to have turned out that: 1. reaper rushes are more effective, since you can tech up to them without worrying about a counterattack. 2. players don't really learn how to defend properly because they rely on the rocks. 3. you can't scout, except with overlords. in my first few practice league games, no terran walled off their chokes. i won with reaper rush twice and once with burrowed roaches waltzing past a terran's front door.
I think its designed for people who have never played the game to just get a feel for it, not much else.
i guess, but technically i never played the game either, i just watched replays =) i also sucked at SC1, and i still haven't really figured out zerg yet. still, i think it ends up emphasizing the wrong ideas. it doesn't teach them to defend from rushes, which means that when it comes to league play it'll just be "zomg wtf is this zergling rush" all over again.
True. It's not so much practising as checking out the shiny buttons. Without objectives given in the campaign. But then it could be argued that very easy AI would do the exact same thing, except that with no rocks people might actually learn the things you mentioned. I think it's supposed to be a combination of "OMG SC2" and "OMG I'm playing a real person through the internet".
oh nuts... metalopolis is even worse. i spawned as zerg... and i can't fast expand. i can't even try out a standard build order on this map. i ended up getting 1-base roaches and hammered down the rocks... ended up double expanding by the time i got it down.
The reapers you mentioned are a real blunder on Blizz' part in my opinion. Because it defeats the object of practice league (slower speed, rocks etc so beginners have a chance to try out build orders, buildings, units, upgrades). It should save beginners from being rushed and give them the opportunity to advance the tech ladder a bit. Also these rocks are quite robust so you should be really save for quite some time. Reapers - and no other race has a comparable unit - just spoil the whole idea.
The rocks do keep away the in-your-face proxy cannon, proxy gate, bunker, and 7-pool rushes. I don't think it's meant to do much else.
that's the problem, though, because there are plenty of other cheesy strategies. for example, i decided to practice a "normal" strategy with protoss, pumping out a few stalkers and a sentry to pretend to block off my ramp before i teched up. opponent did nothing but macro directly to mutas, seriously, after the game in the build order screen, there was nothing but drones, drones, pool-lair-spire, more drones and then constant mutas. lol. in preventing the "standard" cheesy builds it just opens up possibilities for a different type of cheese- in the end, it really doesn't teach newcomers how to fine tune their builds. in fact, they could be testing out a perfectly awesome build order they found on a forum on the internet and execute it perfectly, but still get completely owned... because the non-standard strategies are the ones that win in practice league.
Just protect your resource line do defend against reapers ... just have to be aware were they can jump to access your base.
I think that is actually working as intended... there are several cheap strategies in the game, some work in practice league (reapers, mutalisks) and some don't (proxy gateways, 6 pool). But that is a good thing, as it allows newbies to practice beating mutalisks and reapers, without having to constantly worry about proxy gates and 6 pools. It splits up the learning curve into manageable pieces, instead of having to worry about every cheese strat from the beginning.
There is good rationale behind those rocks - it keeps beginners from getting murdered too quickly. The only thing worse then a beginner learning "improperly" is a beginner panicking and building mass cannons every game because they are tired of getting rushed. I give beginners handicaps in chess sometimes. It's not proper chess, but when I'm playing without a queen suddenly new players play a lot more normally because they aren't scared to play me.
It is ridiculously easy to abuse noobs. When I first entered Practice Mode, I couldn't believe that my (probably new) opponent was located behind two rock walls on every map. Since I knew the games weren't going to count towards my ranking in the real leagues, I ramped to fast-expand then BCs. I played about 8 games and literally won EVERY ONE with mass BC. I might have turned off all eight of my opponents from SC. Because they weren't able to scout, and because they weren't afraid of being attacked until their rocks were destroyed, they lost to what is probably the worst strategy in the books. Made for some laughs until it got crazy boring.
that's exactly it! they might not be vulnerable to the "standard" cheese like zergling rushes and 4-gate proxy pylons, but it just opens up a completely different category of cheese, like zero-ground-forces-BC rush and stuff like that. the end result is they still end up losing a lot of their early games, but instead of losing and learning how to play "normal" games better, they will lose and learn to counter completely unrealistic strats. as soon as practice league is over they'll still have no clue on how to defend a ling rush, but they will know how to defend against battlecruisers 7 minutes into the game. which is a useless skill.
Fast reapers, fast mutalisks, and fast void rays are not unrealistic strats... in fact they work far more often than 6 pools and cannon rushes. I say practice league is working perfectly, it allows newbs to learn to defend against strategies that are actually plausible.
fast mutas or fast void rays are not unrealistic. what IS unrealistic is fast mutas or void rays with ZERO ground army or any base defenses, which is what happens in practice league. these things come en masse at least a full minute earlier than they normally should. reaper rushes are the only rushes that actually work in practice league, so at least they learn to defend against that.
