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Hey. I usually make fairly long blogs but I want to make this short because I want to avoid ranting too much.
Classic cookie cutter story: I've been a SCBW fan and was very excited about SC2 for the longest time, SC2 came around and turned out to be a disappointment to me, but I still play it because I really like what it can be.
It has always been difficult to judge of my position on the ladder in terms of skill, as current rating doesn't mean anything whatsoever. Now that we have master's league, those who are in it know that much: 2%. You'd think it would be fine to say that the players in that league are "competent" at the very least. I mean, 2% sounds reasonably good.
From this point forward, I'm no longer whining - just pondering.
Day9 will talk in his stream about how "Masters" have these very crisp timings and build orders. I don't have any of that. I just wing it every game. I have a friend with post-it's all over his monitors, BO's written down and variations in his builds depending on the maps and all that. I just build stuff.
It's weird because in SCBW, I'd just steal a progamer's build to eventually end up with a solid gameplan that I could twist and bend in reaction to my opponent's behavior. A strategy!
I play Protoss, and I haven't been queuing for ladder because I'm so confused as for what my game plan is, and it's absurdly annoying. I know it sounds lame - I'm literally uncomfortable because if I get in a game and it's not PvZ, then I just don't know what to do. So I build stuff and hope it works, and have little, super-basic mental checklists (for banshees, expands, 10gates and big obvious stuff), but I can't seem to refine my play in the same way that I did back in BW.
The weird thing is that I'm led to believe that most of the players in this league only got there because they're so methodical. I don't really know the point of this blog, I mean, I guess I just feel like I'm at a dead end. I can compete in masters now but I'm not improving anymore, so I'll eventually lose my edge.
I just feel like I'm so bad at the game every time I get in a game only to improvise a build and cross my fingers. My wins don't feel solid - it feels like luck a lot of the time - and my losses generally feel completely dumb.
Anyway, cheers.
  
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feels like its more about the types/frequencies of mistakes that ppl makes at various levels that seperates them rather than the degree of 'methodicalness'.
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I'm also in masters and as far as i can tell day9 is probably talking about high masters, since most people <3k don't have very well thought builds. I've recently started working more vs the computer and planning out builds since it seems i'm not improving at all because there is absolutely no pattern in my play since i end up doing whatever the hell i feel like doing every match lol.
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*sigh* ... this is exactly how I feel too (except I'm still in Diamond and I play Zerg)
I especially agree with you on the "not so solid wins" and the dumb losses.
Anyways, I can continue to rant about the same thing in your blog but just keep on trying to improve. You will get better, just try to have the right mindset. Good luck!
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I'm the same way, 2900 in masters but never cared to watch much sc2 games, reps, or builds..I just make stuff O_O.
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But think about it, even in BW, once u had pretty good understanding of the game, and timings, and decent macro. You were still fucking D, Maybe D+ if you didn't play Terran. (because it was harder to start off with) But in SC2, with little understanding of the game you can still get top 2% look at the # of people who were Olympic or A+ rank on ICCup at any given time. Usually like, 20. and most were progamers smurfing. it was like, top 0.1% now it's too easy, either because the game itself is too easy, or because we haven't figured out how to be good yet.
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I do the same thing for the most part (not master's yet, just diamond). I just make a lot of units/probes/nexus and make sure i engage in the right spot and win games. I think masters just means you have solid fundamentals. Making constant workers, engaging correctly, expanding when possible, scouting, and defending. Everyone in diamond or below is there not because they don't know the right build orders, but because we fail at some simple aspect of the game.
I started out copper. First thing I did was learn a build order and practiced it with qcx's build order tester until I was able to do it without thinking. Simply making units and then 1a them was enough to get me into gold. In gold I started scouting and focused on reacting to my opponent (which is weird because i play protoss). Once I hit platinum I started expanding a lot (in gold I usually 1 based). I played very agressively (4 gate blink, 3 gate robo immortal push), but this eventually reached a point where I was losing to players who expanded quickly so I started expanding myself. Now in diamond I know when/how to scout, i can micro units (this is my biggest weakness right now), I can macro well (my biggest strength), i can engage properly and i'm good with forcefields. Slowly my apm has gone from 20 in bronze to well over 80-90 average during the course of the game (and up to 250 during micro battles).
I've been playing a lot of LoL lately and that has seemed to improve my micro skills a lot.
The difference between a master and someone in the top 200 is going to get smaller and smaller when you get there. Eventually you will play games where you feel neither of you didn't make a mistake except you scouted at 18 instead of 16 so it delayed your tech path by 20 seconds. This happens in all games. The difference between an all-star and a minor leaguer in baseball is getting on base 8 times in 25 instead of 7.
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maybe you just have better intuition and mechanics than the other master leaguers. i suck at sc2 because i don't even have it, but i was maybe D+ or C- in BW, so I can take games from my friend who is high diamond. I know that's actually not saying too much, but I don't have any gameplan or strategy at all. I don't even know build orders, or timing attacks, or which unit combinations are good for countering whatever. I just outmacro him, expand better than he does, etc.
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I think it's just a matter of the game being newer. Right now, all you really need is mechanics and a basic concept of which units shoot up. But as the game refines, I think more and more it will become "this build does this, so I need to do this" and less "oh he has air, let me get stalkers"
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On February 03 2011 07:00 Ursad0n wrote:
But think about it, even in BW, once u had pretty good understanding of the game, and timings, and decent macro. You were still fucking D, Maybe D+ if you didn't play Terran. (because it was harder to start off with) But in SC2, with little understanding of the game you can still get top 2% look at the # of people who were Olympic or A+ rank on ICCup at any given time. Usually like, 20. and most were progamers smurfing. it was like, top 0.1% now it's too easy, either because the game itself is too easy, or because we haven't figured out how to be good yet.
ICCUP ranking system is retarded that's why. D covers such a huge range of skill. If you want a comparison to chess. D would cover the rating of 800-2000. C would be 2000-2100 B would be 2100-2150 and A would be 2150+ simply based on distributions.
In chess, ranking goes like this
2200–2399: National Master
2000–2199: Expert
1800–1999: Class A
1600–1799: Class B
1400–1599: Class C
1200–1399: Class D
1000–1199: Class E
800-999: Class F
since the mean is 1500 and sigma is 400, that means a ~20% spread among the 5 leagues (A B C D E).
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I'm in masters as well, and I am horrible at everything. Top 2% of a rather new game is just not too hard to get for someone who played other RTS on a decent level before. Which rank have you been in BW? I doubt that what you or I do right now would get us in masters league in 2-3 years^^
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Calgary26003 Posts
I feel the same way. I feel like every game I play is so bad it's an embarassment..
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On February 03 2011 07:22 TBO wrote:
I'm in masters as well, and I am horrible at everything. Top 2% of a rather new game is just not too hard to get for someone who played other RTS on a decent level before. Which rank have you been in BW? I doubt that what you or I do right now would get us in masters league in 2-3 years^^
On February 03 2011 07:00 Ursad0n wrote:
But think about it, even in BW, once u had pretty good understanding of the game, and timings, and decent macro. You were still fucking D, Maybe D+ if you didn't play Terran. (because it was harder to start off with) But in SC2, with little understanding of the game you can still get top 2% look at the # of people who were Olympic or A+ rank on ICCup at any given time. Usually like, 20. and most were progamers smurfing. it was like, top 0.1% now it's too easy, either because the game itself is too easy, or because we haven't figured out how to be good yet.
I was high C+ within a couple of months playing BW seriously.
Still C+ sounds significantly less impressive than Masters and I did feel so much better at the game.
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I'm master too and my standard PvZ build is 2 base mass archons derived from many failed DT rushes. And everytime I watch a replay of me I keep the APM tab open.
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On February 03 2011 06:46 Djzapz wrote:
Hey. I usually make fairly long blogs but I want to make this short because I want to avoid ranting too much.
Classic cookie cutter story: I've been a SCBW fan and was very excited about SC2 for the longest time, SC2 came around and turned out to be a disappointment to me, but I still play it because I really like what it can be.
It has always been difficult to judge of my position on the ladder in terms of skill, as current rating doesn't mean anything whatsoever. Now that we have master's league, those who are in it know that much: 2%. You'd think it would be fine to say that the players in that league are "competent" at the very least. I mean, 2% sounds reasonably good.
From this point forward, I'm no longer whining - just pondering.
Day9 will talk in his stream about how "Masters" have these very crisp timings and build orders. I don't have any of that. I just wing it every game. I have a friend with post-it's all over his monitors, BO's written down and variations in his builds depending on the maps and all that. I just build stuff.
It's weird because in SCBW, I'd just steal a progamer's build to eventually end up with a solid gameplan that I could twist and bend in reaction to my opponent's behavior. A strategy!
I play Protoss, and I haven't been queuing for ladder because I'm so confused as for what my game plan is, and it's absurdly annoying. I know it sounds lame - I'm literally uncomfortable because if I get in a game and it's not PvZ, then I just don't know what to do. So I build stuff and hope it works, and have little, super-basic mental checklists (for banshees, expands, 10gates and big obvious stuff), but I can't seem to refine my play in the same way that I did back in BW.
The weird thing is that I'm led to believe that most of the players in this league only got there because they're so methodical. I don't really know the point of this blog, I mean, I guess I just feel like I'm at a dead end. I can compete in masters now but I'm not improving anymore, so I'll eventually lose my edge.
I just feel like I'm so bad at the game every time I get in a game only to improvise a build and cross my fingers. My wins don't feel solid - it feels like luck a lot of the time - and my losses generally feel completely dumb.
Anyway, cheers.
As a Zerg the most important thing for me to remember is timings. Check for expo at 6:00 ZvP and if it isn't there prepare for all hell. ZvT get 4 gases soon after your lair is started. ZvZ if he doesn't hatch first and you did throw down that roach warren right away and make about 5 roaches.
Anyways maybe you can find loose timings like those to base your builds on. You could probably try different builds that "feel" better like when I used to PvT I hated colossi. Maybe you could try gateways/upgrades that LiquidTyler was talking about. Set in stone build orders are alright but they personally do not work well for me, maybe because I'm zerg IDK. It is important to know what a good unit composition is and as long as you can spend all your money and constantly produce probes you will be in a good position. Only one way to get better and that's to keep playing.
edit: have you tried out Zerg or Terran? I have a hunch Zerg will be a good race for you while Terran is probably unplayable. I only say this because when I switched to Zerg I felt like I was getting solid wins and was a lot more consistent in my Zerg play as compared to Protoss. I also cannot play Terran to save my life.
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On February 03 2011 06:54 Megaliskuu wrote:
I'm the same way, 2900 in masters but never cared to watch much sc2 games, reps, or builds..I just make stuff O_O.
Holy crap you're 2900 now?
I find that having crisp plans doesn't even matter as much anymore, especially as terran. Hell, every unit terran can make turns into a strategy, and every unit is viable always. You can faceroll your goddamn keyboard and make random shit and if you attack at a good timing and micro well, and probably pull all your scvs too, you'll win a lot.
Even as protoss, all you really gotta do is cheese over and over. 4 gate - didn't work - dt - nope - proxy voidrays from 3 stargates - oh I won he didn't have 20 hydras.
Zerg is the only race that seems to reward having a plan, but it's not like you actually have a plan that you go into a game and execute. It's more like, ok if they do these builds I'll respond with this. You just have antiplans. You counter and hope that you scout right and that they don't do something you haven't seen before.
The more I play/watch SC2, the more I feel it's a complete disappointment. The engine and interface are great. The graphics are awesome. The AI is just fine. There's nothing inherently wrong with the game except the unit design. And maps too of course =/
I want to be optimistic but I don't see how I can be. SC2 is just... depressing.
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As zerg I feel like I have to do a little more to "prove" myself in masters, but with protoss I'm terribad, have no timings worked out past my expo and still roflstomp fools. I feel so bad sometimes as protoss that I watch myself playing and know that I'm terrible while I'm doing it and still win or sometimes lose, who knows, it all looks terrible.
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On February 03 2011 07:58 SlapMySalami wrote:Show nested quote +On February 03 2011 06:46 Djzapz wrote:
Hey. I usually make fairly long blogs but I want to make this short because I want to avoid ranting too much.
Classic cookie cutter story: I've been a SCBW fan and was very excited about SC2 for the longest time, SC2 came around and turned out to be a disappointment to me, but I still play it because I really like what it can be.
It has always been difficult to judge of my position on the ladder in terms of skill, as current rating doesn't mean anything whatsoever. Now that we have master's league, those who are in it know that much: 2%. You'd think it would be fine to say that the players in that league are "competent" at the very least. I mean, 2% sounds reasonably good.
From this point forward, I'm no longer whining - just pondering.
Day9 will talk in his stream about how "Masters" have these very crisp timings and build orders. I don't have any of that. I just wing it every game. I have a friend with post-it's all over his monitors, BO's written down and variations in his builds depending on the maps and all that. I just build stuff.
It's weird because in SCBW, I'd just steal a progamer's build to eventually end up with a solid gameplan that I could twist and bend in reaction to my opponent's behavior. A strategy!
I play Protoss, and I haven't been queuing for ladder because I'm so confused as for what my game plan is, and it's absurdly annoying. I know it sounds lame - I'm literally uncomfortable because if I get in a game and it's not PvZ, then I just don't know what to do. So I build stuff and hope it works, and have little, super-basic mental checklists (for banshees, expands, 10gates and big obvious stuff), but I can't seem to refine my play in the same way that I did back in BW.
The weird thing is that I'm led to believe that most of the players in this league only got there because they're so methodical. I don't really know the point of this blog, I mean, I guess I just feel like I'm at a dead end. I can compete in masters now but I'm not improving anymore, so I'll eventually lose my edge.
I just feel like I'm so bad at the game every time I get in a game only to improvise a build and cross my fingers. My wins don't feel solid - it feels like luck a lot of the time - and my losses generally feel completely dumb.
Anyway, cheers. edit: have you tried out Zerg or Terran? I have a hunch Zerg will be a good race for you while Terran is probably unplayable. I only say this because when I switched to Zerg I felt like I was getting solid wins and was a lot more consistent in my Zerg play as compared to Protoss. I also cannot play Terran to save my life.
I can play Terran and Zerg at diamond level, but I'm much more comfortable with Terran actually.
I don't know that I can ever be good at Z.
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On February 03 2011 07:27 Chill wrote:
I feel the same way. I feel like every game I play is so bad it's an embarassment..
Cheer up buddy, u just gotta skate you just have to know what units counter what, and make workers.
On February 03 2011 08:07 [Eternal]Phoenix wrote:Show nested quote +On February 03 2011 06:54 Megaliskuu wrote:
I'm the same way, 2900 in masters but never cared to watch much sc2 games, reps, or builds..I just make stuff O_O. Holy crap you're 2900 now?
OMG r u pheonixyspartan from iccup? Or do I have you confused with someone  ?
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Dont know about other races then zerg, but hell, timings ? Only check for when I should send in sacc overlord and keeping time for some allins from terran. Otherwise I have no timings at all.
Feels like timings doesn't exist for zerg.
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I'm also one of those BW players who isn't that interested in SC2, but plays occasionally and completely wings everything.
But yeah, from a BW iccup player's point of view Master level is absolutely abysmal in terms of the required game knowledge and general playing ability. But SC2 has a much larger and younger player base, with a lot more "casual" players.
There's also a different mentality. If you wanted to get good at BW, you would get on iccup and grind out stuff until you really knew and understood it. Now that we have all these livestreams and sites like TL, people can sit back in their armchairs and discuss SC2. So when it gets to actually playing the games they might "know" a lot of strategy, but they have horrible unit control and can't spend their money (which is what BW players mostly care about at low levels).
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never played bw but i'm literally the same, winged it since day 1 and have somehow ended up in masters with literally no clue what im really doing. win about 50% of games and just chillin' at about 2.6k~
never made a build, never really copied a build just ended up making things :S
feel like i could be so much better but quite frankly i really cannot be bothered
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On February 03 2011 09:03 breakingties wrote:
never played bw but i'm literally the same, winged it since day 1 and have somehow ended up in masters with literally no clue what im really doing. win about 50% of games and just chillin' at about 2.6k~
never made a build, never really copied a build just ended up making things :S
feel like i could be so much better but quite frankly i really cannot be bothered
Exactly. My friend says I should put more effort into it but I haven't been able to force myself to play since the patch (except for the 2 games to get master). My friend, whom I used to crush easily 95% of the time now wins 50% of the games against me. He has played 5x as many games as me. He says I would be a lot better if I wrote down timings and such. I would be willing to do that in BW to a certain extent, at least I'd remember timings better... But I guess I don't even make much of an intellectual effort...
It's obviously my fault, but yeah.
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On February 03 2011 08:15 Megaliskuu wrote:Show nested quote +On February 03 2011 08:07 [Eternal]Phoenix wrote:On February 03 2011 06:54 Megaliskuu wrote:
I'm the same way, 2900 in masters but never cared to watch much sc2 games, reps, or builds..I just make stuff O_O. Holy crap you're 2900 now? OMG r u pheonixyspartan from iccup? Or do I have you confused with someone ?
Nope. =D
I posted here under a different name for a couple years before taking a vacation to Disney World. We have played on ladder though. Jungle Basin, PvZ, I won (not like Z can win there anyways).
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On February 03 2011 07:36 Djzapz wrote:Show nested quote +On February 03 2011 07:22 TBO wrote:
I'm in masters as well, and I am horrible at everything. Top 2% of a rather new game is just not too hard to get for someone who played other RTS on a decent level before. Which rank have you been in BW? I doubt that what you or I do right now would get us in masters league in 2-3 years^^ Show nested quote +On February 03 2011 07:00 Ursad0n wrote:
But think about it, even in BW, once u had pretty good understanding of the game, and timings, and decent macro. You were still fucking D, Maybe D+ if you didn't play Terran. (because it was harder to start off with) But in SC2, with little understanding of the game you can still get top 2% look at the # of people who were Olympic or A+ rank on ICCup at any given time. Usually like, 20. and most were progamers smurfing. it was like, top 0.1% now it's too easy, either because the game itself is too easy, or because we haven't figured out how to be good yet. I was high C+ within a couple of months playing BW seriously. Still C+ sounds significantly less impressive than Masters and I did feel so much better at the game.
For anyone that played BW, C+ is alot more impressive than Masters. I would never be able to beat a C+ in BW, but I beat Masters players the majority of the time.
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On February 04 2011 05:26 Disastorm wrote:Show nested quote +On February 03 2011 07:36 Djzapz wrote:On February 03 2011 07:22 TBO wrote:
I'm in masters as well, and I am horrible at everything. Top 2% of a rather new game is just not too hard to get for someone who played other RTS on a decent level before. Which rank have you been in BW? I doubt that what you or I do right now would get us in masters league in 2-3 years^^ On February 03 2011 07:00 Ursad0n wrote:
But think about it, even in BW, once u had pretty good understanding of the game, and timings, and decent macro. You were still fucking D, Maybe D+ if you didn't play Terran. (because it was harder to start off with) But in SC2, with little understanding of the game you can still get top 2% look at the # of people who were Olympic or A+ rank on ICCup at any given time. Usually like, 20. and most were progamers smurfing. it was like, top 0.1% now it's too easy, either because the game itself is too easy, or because we haven't figured out how to be good yet. I was high C+ within a couple of months playing BW seriously. Still C+ sounds significantly less impressive than Masters and I did feel so much better at the game. For anyone that played BW, C+ is alot more impressive than Masters. I would never be able to beat a C+ in BW, but I beat Masters players the majority of the time.
I really feel that C+ is more of an accomplishment than Masters.
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People are confusing the ranking systems, D+ or higher is the equivalent of masters. That may seem silly but for anyone who didn't already realize this, iccup was really fucking hard (especially with all the smurfs at D level). Anyone who has the SC:BW mechanics to be D+ should be top diamond or masters easy.
Ya, masters players aren't pro's and may not have well planned builds but they also aren't going 3 rax 2 fact and 2 starports off 1 base, or getting supply capped at 19. Masters isn't amazing, but even if they aren't following food timings, most masters players still have a strong feel for timings. You don't see masters players who get completely and totally surprised by mutalisks. They generally have good unit and scv production, build structures on time, expand in a resonable fashion, etc.
Go watch some of the pro 2001 brood war games. The game is new. In 8 years, when all the casual players have moved on to Call of Duty 32 I'm sure you won't see people in the top 2% who don't follow build orders to a T.
Overall, master players still have a lot of room for improvement, but watch games from any lower league and realize how many things masters players are worlds better than the other leagues.
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you can't compare iccup with sc2 though, i was C- high in ICCUP and I don't think there was any way I could take games off B- ICCUP. In SC2, its so not mechanically demanding and there is enough randomness that I wouldn't be surprised at all if I was able to take multiple games off 3k+ masters
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On February 04 2011 11:13 AraqirG wrote:
You don't see masters players who get completely and totally surprised by mutalisks.
... =(
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As I see it, people can get away with imprecise play at high levels simply because nobody is that precise yet. SC2 is not as mechanically demanding as BW, but it IS just as complicated in terms of a plan. The difference is that your plan hasn't been used for 5 years and ironed out as good against x and bad against y. Time will change the way that this game looks, though 2% is a huge number of players, so low masters will probably maintain its current look.
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EPT
