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This is clearly just my opinion, but after playing 82 SC2 games and playing a fair amount of diamond players, I don't think many people have any idea how to improve. Is your thought process one of the following:
- I'm going to use this build, no matter what.
- I'm going to cheese.
- I have no intention of making it to midgame.
If you have any of the above thoughts, I really think you have flawed thinking; that or you don't want to actually improve. Point of reference, I just played a guy, I won't reveal his name, but he has played close to 600 games, and he is a random player. The map is Steppes of War, I scout that he's Zerg and that he's six pooling. What's the thought process here? You're either going to win outright, lose outright, or perhaps do just enough damage to make it even, but probably not.
I have friends who insist doing very specific builds, no matter what the opponent is doing. For example, I have a friend who will make a three gateway immortal rush versus Terran, no matter what they're doing. Even if it gets him a win it's a pointless game in my opinion, you might gain points but what's the actual benefit, I wouldn't say you're actually improving.
My theory about improving is that you should play very safe and have a build that should get you in to mid game with no large disadvantages. All my Protoss match ups start with 10 pylon, 10 gate, just for the off chance that my opponent does something cheesy, like a 6pool, I can deal with it. It puts me behind, but I don't feel it puts me behind to the point where more than 5% of my losses could be blamed on losing that economic advantage. As it stands now, my theory is beginning to pay off, as there are very few Terran, Zerg, or Protoss rushes or cheeses that I can't spot and defend with ease.
If I play 10 games, I expect maybe 1 or 2 to make it to a macro mid game point, everyone seemingly does a rush, or a very specific attack no matter what their opponent is doing. For me, it doesn't matter, and it's actually probably even better because even as I near 800 points I gain some very, very wins because people insist on playing this way.
Can any one explain their thought process if they play this way, or have their own theory on improving? I'd be interested in hearing it.
 
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~ I'm Diamond, I dont need to get better.
~ Most people lose to this all-in so I'll win most of my games if I do it.
~ Beating someone with just zerglings is fun.
Probably 3 reasons I can think of just off the top of my head.
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Then of course there are just the clueless kids that don't know doing nothing but all-ins doesn't do so much for you.
I noticed the same thing you did though. Like as an example, probably 80% of my PvZ games so far the Zerg tries to do some kind of ling-baneling allin only to meet a force fielded ramp.
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On August 20 2010 11:37 gods_basement wrote:http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=135766it sounds like it is YOU who does the exact same build no matter what you scout (i.e. enter midgame with no disadvantages). theres nothing wrong with trying to enter midgame with an advantage. also i'm not exactly sure what you're asking for.
lol, i think ur completely lost with ur post. OP is just pointing out that people in platnium/diamond suck. not all of them, just most of them
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Many diamonds don't belong in diamond. That's the first problem.
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I think that mentality will always be embraced by many, but the ladder setup REINFORCES that behavior because getting into Diamond is so damn easy. Once you're in Diamond, it's like you don't feel that urgency to improve as much because there's not much else to amount to, other than #1 in your division, which really means jack shit when looking at all players as a whole.
I wish I fucking sucked at this game, because then I could work my up way through all the leauges as I improve my skills and it'd be fun as hell.
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On August 20 2010 11:37 gods_basement wrote:http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=135766it sounds like it is YOU who does the exact same build no matter what you scout (i.e. enter midgame with no disadvantages). theres nothing wrong with trying to enter midgame with an advantage. also i'm not exactly sure what you're asking for.
The builds I use are akin to Protoss FE in SC:BW, it's safe and as long as you scout, you can adjust and react to what you see. Everything I do is reliant and based upon my opponent. What I meant by doing the exact same build is something like a Terran player who will make X number of barracks and attack a certain point, regardless of what you're doing. The overwhelming majority of the players I play do this, and many have hundreds of games.
What I'm asking is for clarification from players who do this, or for thoughts from others who hold a similar perspective to mine. I can't be the only one who is noticing that a lot of players just blindly go specific builds and either win or lose with it, over and over again.
On August 20 2010 11:41 Lightswarm wrote:lol, i think ur completely lost with ur post. OP is just pointing out that people in platnium/diamond suck. not all of them, just most of them
Suck at knowing good ways to improve perhaps, haha. It's possible I'm wrong, but I think most good players would agree that playing safe and countering/reacting is the best strategy if you plan to improve at the fastest pace.
On August 20 2010 11:43 Mikilatov wrote:
I think that mentality will always be embraced by many, but the ladder setup REINFORCES that behavior because getting into Diamond is so damn easy. Once you're in Diamond, it's like you don't feel that urgency to improve as much because there's not much else to amount to, other than #1 in your division, which really means jack shit when looking at all players as a whole.
I wish I fucking sucked at this game, because then I could work my up way through all the leauges as I improve my skills and it'd be fun as hell.
That's an interesting point. The motivation is that for all extensive purposes, it's not that far fetched to become one of the top 200 in the world on the ladder. As it stands now it's perfectly achievable to be the top 200 in NA, I think you only need 780+ points, whereas for the world you need around 940+, those kind of goals are within any good players grasp I believe.
I wonder what else could be down to curb this lack of urgency.
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infinity21
Canada6683 Posts
When you're at 800+, there's almost no cheeses and I find you see less all-in attacks like 4 gate (though it is still fairly frequent).
Although I do agree with you that plenty of people do this at lower/mid diamond levels and they're never going to get to the top because they're not improving the more critical parts of their game.
On August 20 2010 11:46 Salv wrote:
That's an interesting point. The motivation is that for all extensive purposes, it's not that far fetched to become one of the top 200 in the world on the ladder. As it stands now it's perfectly achievable to be the top 200 in NA, I think you only need 780+ points, whereas for the world you need around 940+, those kind of goals are within any good players grasp I believe.
I wonder what else could be down to curb this lack of urgency.
Make my top 200 NA seem worthless why don't you!
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On August 20 2010 11:49 infinity21 wrote:
When you're at 800+, there's almost no cheeses and I find you see less all-in attacks like 4 gate (though it is still fairly frequent).
Although I do agree with you that plenty of people do this at lower/mid diamond levels and they're never going to get to the top because they're not improving the more critical parts of their game.
I agree about four gate attacks, I barely see them any more, that's one thing that does indeed drop off as you gain more points. I don't even really mean all-in's, just senseless games that you can't possibly take anything away from. You play games with these people and if you defend their attacks, or the thing that they've been building to, they fall apart because you can see they have no transition or experience in playing a longer style game.
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infinity21
Canada6683 Posts
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Well my original point remains, that the motivation for improving is that it's not terribly difficult to break into the top 200. If you play, and you improve at a steady rate, it's definitely accessible to any one at this point, unlike in BW where if you weren't a top player, or the very few on the cusp of being top players, you had absolutely no chance of doing so.
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it all stems from the issue that starcraft 2 is a shitty RTS game overall compared to the original.
only in this lame game, can you keep going 3 rax push, 6 pooling, etc and still get to diamond.
can you imagine on iccup, 4 pooling every game and getting to A? rofl
shitty shitty game.
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Sticking to one build isn't necessary a bad thing.
Like when I started with BW, I kept practicing 5-fact timing push in all of my TvPs just to master it. Because I felt that it was a strong build which potentially could lead me into mid/late game, or even an early win if the timing window was right.
In SC2, I've been doing the 1/1/1 for most if not all of my games, unless my scout found out that the opponent was going for an all-in cheese then I would altered my build a little bit to counter it.
Totally agree on the "cheese/all-in 24/7" though. I knew this zerg guy who went 6-pool in all of his games against me (I've played him like 10+ times, blame SEA). Maybe he thought it was fun doing that I dunno. But I'd rather struggle to get a win through a 30 minutes of sloppy gaming than a 5-min free win from cheese. The first was so much more satisfying 
P/S: I'm only at Plat so my argument might be invalid ;P
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I really disagree with this post all together
The large majority of people who end up a big enough sample size will see themselves increase in skill whether they notice or not. They're hands will get faster - they're timing gets better - they slowly refine their 1 or 2 strategies they are solid with. I don't see an issue with this...
If I do a micro intensive all in and beat you does that mean I can't play a long macro game? Who says that an RTS needs to be a long macro-oriented game to begin with.
The games are independent of each other, no game will be identical. Most of my games for example don't end up going past 20+ minutes. I find that to be extremely normal. Most of my games are 13-18 minutes in length I would say. However the skill difference in that time becomes extremely apparent.
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-The ladder is just very "competitive", I mean, for some people it is practice, but other people just want to win, and whatever gives them the most easy/most wins at that time in terms of build they are gonna do that.
Why? Because they just want to get higher on the ladder on short-term.
And they don't really care about becoming an actual solid/good player on the long-term, they just want to have fun and get wins.
Is that bad?
I mean it is their decision to do that, does it really bother you that much?
It's not like you are suffering from it, or that you get worse because of it.
Let's say everyone just completely focused on becoming a more solid player and started doing builds that are aimed to get small advantages over time and go into lategame.
Now you are playing a tournament, first few games, you get cheesed/get certain pushes, but you have rarely encountered them, so you will probably lose against it (and yes, except if you are just really good, getting put in a spot where you encounter something completely new is mostly gonna affect you in a bad way).
In the end, it's their 50dollars/euro/... and they choose how they want to play.
And yes, let's say 80% of my laddergames are basicly macro-games from my part, but since I got into diamond I also started expirimenting with baneling busts vs P, and a all-in here and there.
Why?
Because I was getting to much in a mindset of passive zerg play, and I really needed to test how far I could push it and how I could punish players for doing certain builds.
+after playing 5 30-45min games you just feel like doing something else for once.
If you encountered me (or someone like me) in one of those games, then in your eyes that might be a player who just cheeses every game.
But maybe that person doesn't actually do that a lot? Don't raze everyone over the same comb (dnno if that expression exists in english, just directly translated).
And imo the higher you go into the ladder the better it gets, I recently went from 500-550 (wich I bounced between for like 5-7 days) to 700'ish. My last 10 games or so, 7 of them were actual long games where the other player also wanted the game to last further, and they had actuall follow-ups.
edit: just read that your over 800, well I guess i'm more "lucky" with the games I get
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HI SALV!Q
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A little better are the people that do the same build on every map, they just know their one build and they are completely oblivious why they lose 3x more on steppes than on Blist, they never even notice.
Tbh you're not too different from them. You go a build that will get you a high win rate, they go a build that gets them a high win rate. You play to your strong points (macro oriented multi tasking) and they play to their strong points (micro oriented early game battles). You want to practice your macro and management, every time they lose they'll think they didn't rush early enough or micro well enough so they'll want to keep practicing that.
I play similar to your style cause I know that eventually with new builds and maps one base all ins are going to shift towards more eco friendly early games and larger army control, but I only know this cause I played sc1. If someone has only played AoE2 where more than half the games are feudal age rushes cause that's the dominant strat and early game micro was everything to success, they would never know to play macro. Hell, we might be playing this game the wrong way, maybe one base all-ins will dominant every other build if microed properly and we should all be working on microing our units.
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I agree, it seems like the majority of protoss and terran players are just sticking to some kind of 1 base all-in build. At least against zerg they are. The sad part is that I still lose to them fairly often.
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I think he just wants his unit portraits.
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EPT
