A look back

At the beginning of last season I got placed in Bronze 2 and this was totally correct. I was at the beginning of re-learning the game and a totally new hotkey setup put me in the shoes of a real wood-league player.

After starting with PiG’s B2GM build, switching to ViBE’s B2GM build, trying to sneak in more micro that I am capable of and reverting back to strict ViBE’s B2GM and mainly focussing on spending Larvae and avoiding supply blocks, I started to get a good rhythm. More often than not I had more than 60 drones at the 6:00 mark and were finally starting to max out before the 10:00 mark. Even in games with early aggression from opponents I could stick to my macro game plan.

A new look - with attitude

Right before season change I decided to spice it up a bit. I set a new player name Karen and also changed the portrait to the female with the perfect let-me-talk-to-your-manager-haircut. (I think her actual name is Jessica) As you can see, I also created a clan - just to have a clan-tag that reflects my age. :)

What’s also new directly after my placement match is the Gold 1 border. My MMR was just dipping into Gold 1 range before the season change, so I expected to be placed here. But looking at the MMR progress bar, I noticed something strange: Why am I now at the end of the bar and not at the beginning anymore? In the allthingszerg Discord I was told the league and division boundaries in terms of MMR get adjusted around the active player base, so there is a certain amount of players in each division. Seems like the bar for platinum just got lowered. The MMR that was needed to enter Gold 1 last season is now the entry condition of Plat 3.

So it was not big surprise what happened after the next game:

Overall the ladder isn’t that scary at the moment and my win rate is pretty good. So I already try to brace for the losing streak, that will follow when the matchmaking tries to level me at round about 50% win rate.

Wrapping it up

Since Season 3 2013 I am back in Platinum League and it feels really good. I actually have the impression that I am currently a better player than back then. Not only because I was told that the overall skill level increased and former Diamond players are the new Platinum players - I also was a different kind of player back then. I have always been more of a macro player, but looking back and comparing with my current play style and focus my macro was really shit. My micro might have been a bit better than now, but I am absolutely sure that my macro just died when I was microing Ling/Bling/Muta.

So being at my prime at the age of 40 and still having so much room to improve gives me a lot of long term motivation to keep playing this game. :) I am happy, I came back. And now I have to talk to more people on the ladder, asking to talk to their managers.

/Update: MMR ranges were adjusted