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I don't know why, but today I'm wondering all the time if it's possible to get worse at something despite constant practice. May it be playing an instrument, a sport, simply SC2 or other games.
I'm wondering about the progress I'm making in SC2 and I never feel like I'm really improving, even if I'm moving up in leagues. I've recently advanced to diamond and I'm still thinking I don't belong there (I started out in bronze when the game came out).
Maybe this is directly connected to the match making system pitting you against almost even opponents.
I also always feel bad when I don't play for a while. But I'm also playing guitar, and even if I quit for a month and then pick it back up again I'm still able to play the same as before. So I'm not sure when your SC2 (or general) skills start to degrade when you stop practicing.
So how do you feel about this? Maybe you've had the same feeling before, maybe not. But I just wanted to type out my latest thoughts 
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My ladder record bounces up and down, which as you said is part and parcel with the matchmaking system's mechanics  I've also felt disheartened at times and for a while early on I was scared to ladder because of fear of losing.
I feel as if my skills do degrade if I have to go away from the game for a week, I lose my tempo and make silly mistakes. However you said you have advanced from bronze to diamond. While you might not feel as if you have improved, to me it seems you certainly have!
And you should definitely be happy with that
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Maybe this is directly connected to the match making system pitting you against almost even opponents.
That's funny...I'm low silver and all my opponents are ranked at least top 20 in their divisions. My last four games were against a rank 1 Silver, rank 20 gold, rank 1 bronze...and some other guy that I can't remember offhand.
You definitely should take a break and not worry about getting better or worse. Constantly playing despite the fact that you're obviously frustrated with your progress is going to hamper your gameplay in my (blatanly unprofessional) opinion.
Or just mess around with cheeses, weird strats, and limit yourself to doing certain things. Hope you get out of the rut :D
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It depends on how you practice. You should identify the parts of your play that you find the hardest to perform, remember, or understand, and focus on that until it's on par with the rest of your play. It's certainly possible to get worse in certain areas of your play relative to your progress in other areas. As a simple example, let's say you are pretty good at keeping your minerals and gas low, but you suck at producing workers. So, you work on producing workers more often and get really good at it. Now you have more resources to spend, and it feels like you're worse at spending your resources. Really though, it that you just have more to spend and you aren't any worse at it. So lets say you get better at spending your resources and you produce units more often. This will make it feel like you've gotten worse at not getting supply capped, when really you're just using up your supply faster.
The only realistic approach to it is to tackle each individual issue one at a time, trying to keep them all in line with each other so no one of them falls too far behind. Just don't view it as getting worse, just that your improvements in one area cause another area to become more challenging.
You mentioned guitar, I play too, and I can tell you I feel the same way right now with sight reading the music. I just went from grade 6 to grade 7 classical guitar and it still feels like I'm sight reading at a grade 2 or 3 level. I take forever to read through a piece for the first time, then I memorize it right away so I can actually practice it. Every grade I move up, there's more new stuff to sight read, so it feels like I'm getting worse even though I'm actually getting slightly better at it over time. Now that my exam is over I'm going just take as long as I need to and focus 100% on sight reading, going back to earlier grades for practice.
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Don't forget that the game is evolving as your opponents learn more and get better; if you don't play for a while, even if you come back and play as well as you had been playing, the environment is tougher than it was.
I think you're also on the money with the system matching you against equally skilled players-- even if you improve dramatically you wouldn't notice that you can now stomp people you struggled against before since you'd never play them.
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Thanks for the replies so far
Gonna keep it short since I'm already in bed typing on the PS3 with the controller... which takes forever
On February 27 2011 11:22 G_G wrote:You mentioned guitar, I play too, and I can tell you I feel the same way right now with sight reading the music. I just went from grade 6 to grade 7 classical guitar and it still feels like I'm sight reading at a grade 2 or 3 level. I take forever to read through a piece for the first time, then I memorize it right away so I can actually practice it. Every grade I move up, there's more new stuff to sight read, so it feels like I'm getting worse even though I'm actually getting slightly better at it over time. Now that my exam is over I'm going just take as long as I need to and focus 100% on sight reading, going back to earlier grades for practice.
Funny that you mention that, this is a situation similar to the match making in SC2. It gets harder and more advanced the more you improve and it makes you feel as if you didn't
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2nd Worst City in CA8938 Posts
PandaCore:
I feel this way all the time when I play games. The best way to deal with this is to take a step back so you can see more clearly, so to speak. What I mean by this is, take a moment to reflect. What I often do is, after a day of gaming, I take the time to just sit there in thought and go over the games in my head and see what I lacked (replays work too). This allows me to see what basic techniques I currently need improvement on, so that the next time I play again, I can focus on that specific aspect of my game a bit more to improve it.
Remember, improvement and number of games played/time put in are not in direct correlation, though it certainly helps. You have to acknowledge what is wrong and strive to improve, little by little.
And, for me, my skills start to rust if I don't play for like, a week, though if it's only a week, a few practice games usually get me back in shape.
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Not necessarily worse, but definitely rusty.
I sometimes go for a few weeks without laddering when I have a lot of work to do, and I often go on losing streaks after that. But after some practice, it shouldn't be too hard to get back to where you were.
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On February 27 2011 10:58 PandaCore wrote:I don't know why, but today I'm wondering all the time if it's possible to get worse at something despite constant practice. May it be playing an instrument, a sport, simply SC2 or other games. [1] I'm wondering about the progress I'm making in SC2 and I never feel like I'm really improving, even if I'm moving up in leagues. I've recently advanced to diamond and I'm still thinking I don't belong there (I started out in bronze when the game came out). [2] Maybe this is directly connected to the match making system pitting you against almost even opponents. I also always feel bad when I don't play for a while. But I'm also playing guitar, and even if I quit for a month and then pick it back up again I'm still able to play the same as before. So I'm not sure when your SC2 (or general) skills start to degrade when you stop practicing. [3] So how do you feel about this? Maybe you've had the same feeling before, maybe not. But I just wanted to type out my latest thoughts
[1] It is said that "practice makes perfect", but that's a terribly misunderstood and misconstrued statement. Really what it means is "perfect practice makes perfect". In other words, just doing something a lot (grinding) doesn't necessarily make you good at it. You have to practice with the intention to improve and a method to carry out that intention.
This is a really difficult thing to do and kind of silly (if you think about it) for a game to require so much work. Maybe do one or two "serious" practice games a day where you focus on using a method to improve your play. The rest can be just for fun. Making a distinction between "serious" games and entertainment games allows you to mentally relax but still apply learning.
[2] You probably are improving at least a little bit. Improvement often happens one detail at a time (in many things, not just in Starcraft). However, you also might have hit a personal skill ceiling. In order to break past those, you generally need to re-examine yourself and almost "start from scratch" in the sense that you approach everything with a new mindset and a new method for improvement.
[3] Your skills haven't really degraded, it's just the different nature of the two things you're comparing. Playing guitar is almost 100% muscle memory. Composing with a guitar triggers your muscle memory. Improvising with a guitar triggers your muscle memory. Practicing music theory in relation to guitar even triggers muscle memory. That's why when you come back to it, it all "snaps" back very quickly into place.
Starcraft, on the other hand, is only about 50-80% muscle memory, and the degree to which you are on mechanical "autopilot" differs from match to match. The strategy portion of Starcraft isn't something you can remember at all! So it's not surprising that it's hard to pick back up after a break. Your mind has temporarily forgotten how to set itself up to deal with the problems presented in Starcraft.
Try to treat each Starcraft match as an entirely separate game on its own. This way you won't be bogged down by trying to trigger your mental "muscle memory" to react to situations and instead will rapidly form your strategy anew each game. Ironically, approaching the game this way helps you better remember to do X when you see Y.
Hope this was helpful. Good luck.
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Also, there is one thing that a lot, if not all of the posters here are forgetting about. You can get worse at any RTS game if you practice a bad strategy, or in this case, BO. Either way, just keep reading TL.net every few days(minimum) to make sure you know whats going on with strategy and also look at liquipedia every now and then(even if it is just to see that DT and yell at it to stop killing your workers for once) .
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Practice means you will get better at doing something. Always.
However, what you are practicing also matters. Practicing perfection will help you improve much more efficiently then practicing failure. Incorrect practice will help you get better at incorrect things.
The other issue is that other people may be practicing harder and more often then you are. You might be getting better, but relative to other people you are getting worse.
The key is to practice with intent, and to practice correctly. Amateurs practice until they get it right, Professionals practice until they get it wrong. Then they realize where their failure point is, and push past it.
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yes you can get worse at something with practice, if your practice isn't focused and disciplined, but rather just repetition
if you're going up in leagues, you are definitely improving, however marginally
i disagree with the guitar part, it may seem to you you can do it just the same after a break, but in reality it takes about a week of practice to get back to the level you were at before a one month break, even if the muscle memory kicks into gear immediately. for sc2 there's the added factor of new strategies emerging during a break that make the recovery even slower
all skill degrade with lack of practice, without exception, and the bigger the break in an activity, the more time you need to reach your previous level - that is, if it's an activity where you can reach your previous level at all
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EPT
