(Part 2) Best products from r/starcraft

Here is a scientific explanation of the Artosis curse: Regression toward the mean.

Basically, Artosis makes his predictions based on observations of high above (their own usual) average achievements of players. The problem is that there is actually quite a bit of randomness involved. At the high level SC II is being played at no single player is skilled enough to dominate everyone else (consistently, but likely not even at any one point in time if everyone would play against everybody else instead of just a random(ha!) selection). Randomness means, that when you observe someone being above average the chance that next time you observe them they will be WORSE, closer to the mean (back to normal!), is much higher compared to observing them doing something outstanding again.

I would like to point out that this is ONE of the forces at work. It does explain the Artosis curse. It does not (need to!) explain everything that goes on in the world or even just in the world of SC II. And it doesn't claim that this happens every single time, only on average.

Here is what Kahneman used as an example:

> The psychologist Daniel Kahneman, winner of the 2002 Nobel prize in economics, pointed out that regression to the mean might explain why rebukes can seem to improve performance, while praise seems to backfire.[8]

> “I had the most satisfying Eureka experience of my career while attempting to teach flight instructors that praise is more effective than punishment for promoting skill-learning. When I had finished my enthusiastic speech, one of the most seasoned instructors in the audience raised his hand and made his own short speech, which began by conceding that positive reinforcement might be good for the birds, but went on to deny that it was optimal for flight cadets. He said, “On many occasions I have praised flight cadets for clean execution of some aerobatic maneuver, and in general when they try it again, they do worse. On the other hand, I have often screamed at cadets for bad execution, and in general they do better the next time. So please don’t tell us that reinforcement works and punishment does not, because the opposite is the case.” This was a joyous moment, in which I understood an important truth about the world: because we tend to reward others when they do well and punish them when they do badly, and because there is regression to the mean, it is part of the human condition that we are statistically punished for rewarding others and rewarded for punishing them. I immediately arranged a demonstration in which each participant tossed two coins at a target behind his back, without any feedback. We measured the distances from the target and could see that those who had done best the first time had mostly deteriorated on their second try, and vice versa. But I knew that this demonstration would not undo the effects of lifelong exposure to a perverse contingency.

If you only read one book this year, let it be Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow.

• Best reasonable price mic: Blue Snowball
  
• Programs: Fraps for VOD Only, XSplit for livecasting (TwitchTV can upload to YT, so you don't need fraps if you live cast)
  
  I copied and pasted my response from a other caster I was giving advice to:
  
  You can't use viewer count for motivation. For a new caster each video is a lotto ticket, there is a very small chance one of your casts will make it on a site such as SC2Casts or Reddit but when it does you will get 1000 views and hope that 5% of those come back. Until that happens, just upload on a consistent schedule; for instance I just started live casting at 19:00 EST every day and uploading the VODs to Youtube. By setting up a schedule you are catering to "the 1%" who watch you, hoping they tell friends and such.
  
  If you still enjoy casting after following a schedule for a month or two, look into purchasing some gear to improve your quality. You can't look it like "I will buy a $100 mic and it will get me more views and pay itself off!". You're staying at home more and if you are like me staying at home means you are not going out to the bar; which is saving you money. It now becomes I saved $100 this month by not going out; I reward myself with a microphone.
  
  Don't advertise your video's until you are very happy with them yourself; you will only get flamed and demotivated. Every new caster can improve upon something; vocabulary, mic, and just over all quality. Watch every video you make and take notes until you get comfortable.
  
  If you want replays, I have been attaching replays to my YouTube casts lately http://youtube.com/RageQuitTV but if you just google "SC2 Replays" you will find many replays. However I sift through them which ensures they are good games.

1. Arcturus is personally one of the most interesting characters of the StarCraft universe. He was a self-serving evil, but one the Dominion almost needed in the face of annihilation. Stories revolving around his Dominion were interesting as they were people responding to living under an oppressive regime and trying to do good from within it, while largely still remaining loyal.
   
   
2. SC1 and BW by far. SCII made him into a cartoon villain and lost his wit and charisma. Co-op did a FANTASTIC job of bringing that back and making him less of a baby kicker. But the best interpretation of him was the novel I, Mengsk, which went deep into his personality and how he operated as a person, as well as his relationships with his son and others, both on a personal and grand political scale.
   
   
3. Oh bad, by far. You don't make a speech about how you'll rule this sector or see it burnt to ashes around you unless your prime motivation is yourself. But the Dominion itself was rather grey because of how cruel and self serving the person on top was, and he was deluded into believing that the success of the Mengsks was the success of the sector.
   
   
4. I love Valerian as a character, I think he's done a great job distinguishing himself and his struggles. But I also feel like he's underutilized and every story has to be "I'm not my father." I'm hoping we get more of just him. I will say I find his Dominion less interesting, though they do tell some good stories on how Valerian's peace is shaky at best, I preferred the stories told under the opporession of Arcturus.
   
   
5. Oh kill him. The UED had the right idea.
   
   
6. 100%. Billions died because of his ambition, and he specifically destroyed a civilian population to cement his rule. He talked about the good of mankind but it was for his own personal gain. He would kill people for his own personal vendettas against him, and committed unspeakable experiments on humans and aliens alike. He did however keep the Dominion together in the wake of the Brood War, which probably ensured its survival, but he was kept alive he literally would have ushered in armageddon sooner.

As far as books, the Dark Templar trilogy was the only ones I read that I felt were historically important at all (or good, for that matter). I'm a lore nerd but I'm at work so can't really get to too many good resources (stupid web filter).

Most of what you need to know comes from the games though. The Zeratul missions are particularly revealing, and tie in with the following books perfectly.

Firstborn - Book 1

Shadow Hunters - Book 2

Twilight - Book 3

edit: When i said historical significance, I meant lore that you might not find in the game, predominantly event that reveal the origin of the Xel'Naga, The Dark Voice, the Void, the Hybrids, etc..

Metzen has said he'd like the entire StarCraft series to be told in novel form. There are a number of books (some pretty good) that are basically the campaign of SC1, BW, and SC2 written in a novel.

The Dark Templar series above is the only set of books worth reading that 1) are good and 2) are faithful to, and add to, the lore, and aren't just the campaign retold.

It's originally a Gamecube game obviously, and can be played on Wii as well, but these days most people play on PC netplay.

https://www.smashladder.com/ The netplay ladder for both Melee and PM. It has guides to get everything set up, but here is the guide you will want for Melee. You will need to find an NTSC v1.02 Melee ISO, I'm sure you can figure out how to do that ;)

To start off with you can use any PC controller or even a keyboard (it sounds crazy but some people have done it successfully). If you get more serious or you want to play in offline tournaments you will need a Gamecube controller and adapter. Adapters are pretty cheap, just make sure it's a WiiU compatible adapter like this one, Dolphin can detect it in WiiU mode and this will work best. New GC controllers are unfortunately much more expensive, and probably will be until the next Smash game comes out and they make a new batch. This is probably the biggest barrier to entry. You can find lightly used ones for more reasonable prices. It is also possible to repair more damaged controllers (there are guides for this and people who make a business out of it). Third party controllers are generally pretty trash, I would avoid those.

As for actually playing, this guide is the classic for advanced techniques, though it's a lot to take in at once. There are a ton of other guides on Youtube as well if you feel like you need a different explanation or just want something more modern.

Ok

Step 1) Aim for a target audience size
If you have 10 guys you can run the entire thing from an apartment with a large screen TV. This is how we started out in SoCal.

Advertise on reddit/TL to get a feel of the size. (Dont forget /r/NYC)

Step 2) Find a venue
Venue is going to depend a lot on size (hence step 1)

If you are in the 20 and below range consider a bar or small cozy eatery with friendly management and an internet connection. If you explain its a sporting event they will usually let you take over a TV in a corner for awhile.

In the above 20 range you are going to need a "proper" venue.
I always work with Joe of Joes pizza. He is a super nice guy and I definitely lucked out in that department. Try calling around to different locations to assess price. Even at Joes I end up paying (or splitting) some cost. I again get lucky in this department because Joe is willing to staff his place out 11pm+ plus for us.

Step 3) the set up

You need an internet set up obviously. Almost all bars run on an old spread channel system. There will be a box in the back with RCA cables running into boxes that are then pipeing in Cable TV.

In order to link into these you need to convert your outbound video to RCA. Test this at home first! You will need

1. 3.5mm stereo mini phone plug to dual RCA jack stereo cable
   
2. HDMI or S-Video or VGA to RCA Video out
   
   HDMI) You are going from digital to analog out. There is going to be some converter boxes involved
   
   S-Video) something like this: http://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-S-Video--Composite-Adapter-inches/dp/B0009EXWQQ/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1299981022&sr=1-1
   
   VGA to RCA) http://www.amazon.com/Sewell-Converter-All---One-Cable/dp/B003BVVYSM/ref=sr_1_4?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1299981050&sr=1-4
   
   ALWAYS TEST THIS BEFORE HAND!
   
   Step 4) Get to the event early to set up the video.
   
   Step 5) Stay late to make sure everything is taken care of for the venue person so the experience is good and you can utilize their facilities later.
   
   Any other questions?

Hey guys, producer for Star Nation here. Justin just got back from Europe a couple weeks ago shooting Dream Hack and a lot of footage with WhiteRa. On arriving back into town, he's been putting together a short doc for Complexity because they helped to get us out to MLG Anaheim. Keep an eye out for that. Some of that footage will be good for the feature.

I've been wanting to post a blog on our website about the issue of "relevancy." Numbers-wise, I believe that the majority of documentaries shoot long before release, and most of the time the subject matters are fairly niche. Star Nation isn't a documentary about current politics, so timeliness is less of an issue. We're also not a journalism organization, so it's not critical to have "breaking news" nor release our film immediately after an event.

Take the documentary Anvil: The Story of Anvil as an example. I'm not sure that their story would be any worse if released any later, and we also hope to be able to find a timeless story for our doc. You may argue that Anvil's topic matter isn't getting as much media coverage as StarCraft/eSports to make it irrelevant. Maybe. If that were true, then I would then point you to the last feature documentary I produced, DMT: The Spirit Molecule.

CASE STUDY

DMT is one of the strongest known psychedelics, and it was also relatively unknown even in the drug community when my director first started shooting the doc in 2005. While we produced the film, ayahuasca (active chemical being DMT) started becoming a huge topic in general media being covered by CNN, TIME, Hustler, reddit, and many more (don't have time to link them all). While a lot of people were discovering DMT in their everyday news and entertainment sources, it absolutely wasn't making the topic matter irrelevant. In fact, it was making DMT all the more relevant to more people. More and more people became fans of our doc's Facebook page as they became aware of our film and topic matter through the media and through fans of our film. Our film didn't particularly have that much more information than was already available to the public especially since it was based around a book, but the film format is just much more easily consumed than other formats (books, articles, etc.).

Since irrelevancy wasn't an issue, DMT:TSM got picked up in 2011 by Gravitas and sublicensed to Warner Bros to get in 100M homes. We become third most popular documentary on iTunes for about 3 weeks. We also became the top most streamed film on NetFlix for a little over 3 days. I regret not screen capping those bits, so you'll have to trust me on those figures. However, I hope that we can get Star Nation in front of that many eyes also.

That said, I agree with HRvi that the pure eSports information in Star Nation may not be news to you guys, but hopefully the documentary footage and story will show you another perspective that you will enjoy while we push eSports out to a much broader audience.

Well, to help me learn the alphabet I would do my best to write all the letters out without looking at any resouces. I would glance back when I would have to, but I would try to not look if I could help it. Then I would attempt to recite the letter I was writing to see if I knew what sound the letter made. I learned the alphabet pretty fast.

I am learning at my college, so things are probably a little easier for me. But some other stuff I've done outside of class was getting a copy of this Russian grammar book and using it any time I didn't understand a grammar concept. Cuz I gotta say, Russian grammar is REALLY hard. Super different from English. I also sometimes go read Russian news articles in Chrome, pull it up in one page in Russian and open another tab and have it translate to English. And attempt to read the Russian, then the English.

Best of luck learning Russian. :D

You're probably joking, but honestly, having cold hands really bothers me, my left hand especially. I have a portable heater that I turn on and put my left hand over between matches, seems to help. My friend used to run his hands over warm water before playing which also strikes me as a good idea.

I'm going to school to become a stenographer. When I graduate, I think I'm going to bring something like this with me on jobs to keep my hands warm.

StarCraft is an amazing game because it's so incredibly well balanced, it's able to be played at the highest competitive level. Most of the tournament action is in South Korea, where it's regularly televised with big name sponsors, just like any other sport. However, it's starting to catch on in Europe and the US.

More importantly, the StarCraft community is comprised of some of the nicest gamers you'll ever meet. It's very disimilar from XBOX Live gaming (Halo, mostly), if you're familiar with that. Rather, everyone is very well mannered (even the exceptions to this aren't all that bad by comparison).

If you need to get a StarCraft gamer a gift, there's enough of a culture around it that you can find t-shirts, posters, calendars, toys, novelty items, etc. - You might be able to find action figures if you look hard enough, but they're difficult to find these days as they're not made anymore (as far as I know).

Here are some links to get you started:

• http://thehandsomenerd.com/ (the Micro/Macro one + the "Born to Fast Expand" are probably the best options here)
  
• http://search.hottopic.com/search?p=Q&w=starcraft
  
• http://www.zazzle.com/starcraft+tshirts
  
• http://www.amazon.com/Starcraft-Video-Raynors-Raiders-Poster/dp/B0041STB02
  
• http://www.amazon.com/StarCraft-II-2011-Wall-Calendar/dp/1416285008/
  
  If you're looking to blow minds and spend some serious cash, a gaming mouse might be another option. Here's one people seem to like:
  http://store.razerzone.com/store/razerusa/en_US/pd/productID.169418100/parentCategoryID.35208800/categoryId.35210600
  
  Oh and uh... To my secret santa stalker, if you're going this route, I wear a medium. :)
  
  TLDR; StarCraft merchandise is probably your best bet.

https://www.amazon.com/SteelSeries-Rival-Optical-Gaming-Mouse/dp/B0160USMW6

The Rival 300 is such a good, comfortable, no-BS mouse that I have an extra one in box should my current one fail. (It hasn't, in over three years. I haven't been as lucky with Razer and Logitech.) You can adjust DPI and color on it if you want, but I keep the color off, found one DPI and stuck with it.

With keyboards, mechanicals are the best on the market. They really do feel a lot better to press. They're also usually easy to pop the keys on and off, and usually are easy to clean. You also don't need a $179 keyboard, unless you like LEDs a lot. https://www.amazon.com/Corsair-STRAFE-Mechanical-Gaming-Keyboard/dp/B00ZUPOMDQ/ I like Corsair keyboards and the Cherry Red switch. Not too loud, good feel to them.

Layouts, if you feel up to starting from scratch, you might take the time to jump into TheCore: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/sc2-strategy/341878-thecore-advanced-keyboard-layout or, alternatively, TheCore Lite: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/sc2-strategy/333891-thecore-lite-advanced-keyboard-layout These provide options for all 10 control groups to be accessible.

This is a strange, but related question:

I need better headphones for gaming. I settled on getting these after basically taking a straight recommendation from a friend

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0012XFDWO

The problem is that the reviews suggest that I need a sound card with amplifier in order for them to work? I'm not sure I understand. I am of reasonable technical skill, but I'm not sure I'm understanding what I need exactly. Particularly this review and the comments on it are somewhat troubling. They've essentially left me thinking that I need to get a new sound card (currently using onboard sound on an ASUS P6X58D Premium) but I'm not sure exactly what specification the new card would require. I'm just leaving this here as a means of passively collecting research if anyone else understands this topic better. I'll be a few tabs to the right in my browser doing more research on my own, so don't hassle me with the "LOOK IT UP, RETARD" if you don't mind. I'm trying.

Anyway, I appreciate it.

I've been enjoying your casts lately, also, TB. You help to fill my Saturdays in particular. I enjoy having a nice ladder on one monitor while I watch some tournaments on the other. Keep up the great work! I can't wait to hear how some crazy baller casting equipment helps things sound :)

F21-7d mechanical keyboard is not cherry or ALPS, they're APC. They're good. 40 bucks and better than the razer ones everyone considers the 'cheapest'.

Headset? Must it be miced? Seriously there are literally no good audio quality gaming headsets even from sennheiser who is a big player in audiophile stuff. If it must get these. I know what you're thinking not over the ear and all that shit, i agree. But these are honestly the best bang for your buck you will get as plantronics break like its going out of style and sennheiser honestly throws together their gaming line. And dont even mention razer in headsets.

I bought the Razer Abyssus before summer, and I have to say it is one of the best mouses I have ever had and is keeping up perfectly so far even though I travel around with it quite a lot. So if you are willing to spend a few more euros I would say that it is definitely worth it.

http://www.amazon.com/Razer-Abyssus-Precision-Optical-Gaming/dp/B002XLR0JI

iOne Scorpius

Adesso MKB-125B

These are about the lowest that you can get. I'm not sure about the Adesso, but I have a friend who has an iOne mechanical, and it is pretty solid.

Gaming mouse doesn't mean RTS mouse. RTS mice usually have just 5 buttons and that's only because the forward and back buttons aren't intrusive. Hell Flash used this for the longest time. Not exactly a "gaming" mouse but worked for the best BW player ever.

Cheapest for HotS:

http://www.simplygames.com/info/19795/StarCraft-2-Heart-Of-The-Swarm-PC

Or for 14p more if you prefer Amazon:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00A6OP29E/soundsvault-21

I've used Simply Games loads though and never had any problems. Really fast free delivery too

No one seems to be selling WoL. Amazon cheapest it looks like:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Starcraft-II-Wings-Liberty-DVD-ROM/dp/B000RE216U/ref=sr_1_1?s=videogames&ie=UTF8&qid=1369653320&sr=1-1&keywords=starcraft+2

Source: http://www.gamestracker.com/

it was 150 from Amazon. I'm sure you can find it on Ebay or get lucky on Craigslist and find it for less.

Link

Filco, best thing my hands have ever touched so far.

why are you buying from blizzard? if you spend a few minutes looking around you will find better deals.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Starcraft-II-Heart-Swarm-Mac/dp/B00A6OP29E/ref=sr_1_1?s=videogames&ie=UTF8&qid=1421611664&sr=1-1&keywords=heart+of+swarm

Startale uses the Zowie MiCO, which is pretty much an exact copy of the Logitech Mini Optical Mouse, which is what all KR BW players used.

simple, easy, and cheap - Razer Abyssus

Where do you live? Amazon has PC 350 for $150

http://www.amazon.com/Sennheiser-PC-350-Collapsible-Microphone/dp/B0012XFDWO/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pdT1_nS_nC?ie=UTF8&colid=14LJNXMC80SGL&coliid=I1TPQ8RE9JJLJ0

Logitech Mini Optical Mouse:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00006HMPF/ref=pe_53930_17766770_pe_vfe_d1?tag=tealiq-20

this mechanical keyboard is $40

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Starcraft-II-Heart-Swarm-Mac/dp/B00A6OP29E/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1418165573&sr=8-1&keywords=starcraft+2