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I agree with some of your points OP. I spend more time watching and hanging out in channels now, but that's because I'm kind of burned out on playing.
Anyways what annoys me most is when so many people ask for 1v1's in chat, and they ask for a league that's the same as they are. Just click the find match button! No need to ask, no need to search, they will put you against an even opponent!
Most people will say they get cheesed too much on ladder, but really they are just scared of laddering. I got several bnet friends who mass customs all day long and admit they are just scared to ladder for some reason.
Oddly enough I think they make the same mistake the OP makes in a roundabout way... They take the game TOO SERIOUSLY.
Just remember it's just a hobby. You play and get better because it's fun, not because it says something about your worth or lack of it.
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Osaka27106 Posts
Lots of people enjoy watching others excel at their hobbies. It is why I watch the NHL while also playing on the men's C team at the local rink. Doesn't make me a bitch.
I'm not really sure why you feel the need to adjudicate the amount of time people spend playing vs watching/reading. Online gaming has always had those who mass game, others those who use it as a social tool, and still others who enrich the experience by creating game related content. A healthy community needs all of these aspects.
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I generally can find about an hour or two a day I can commit to SC2. Depending on the time and how I'm feeling will determine whether I log in and play 4 or 5 games or get on TL and watch streams. I know tons of people who can put aside more time than that but I guess that's why I'm still high diamond and have yet to hit masters.
But yes I agree..mass laddering if done often and seriously will help.
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I agree with a lot of it, but some people just like having fun, and watching streams and all that is part of the fun, usually I play during the day and watch streams/browse TL at night when I am worn out.
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Thanks for all your input, it was good for me to hear the counter arguments and I can understand a lot of them.
The thing with me is, I like playing SC2 as much as the next guy... but I like even more the feeling of self-improvement. It's so gratifying.
A year or two ago on SC BW I used to be afraid of ICCup ladder. Playing more than 3 games would give me a headache, I hated how awful I was compared to the pros I watched on-stream. I couldn't do anything right, my multitude of mistakes angered me so that I didn't play as much. Same story as a lot of you here, I think.
Then by a stroke of luck I met a B- Zerg and an A- Terran on ICCup who kindly agreed to train me. They taught me 3-hatch muta ZvT and checked my games every day and got on my ass if I didn't play 10 games a day. I mean literally shouted at me if I didn't play 10. At the time I hated it, but looking back I am super thankful they did it.
It was the motivation I needed. They teased out the competitive nature within me. Since then I've been involved with LAN culture, online tournaments, and active SC2 training.
FYI I do watch streams (for study and entertainment). Unless I have work in the morning, I watch GSL religiously. I follow random TL posts, interact with the community, and have fun. However, I'm of the opinion that too much stream-watching, theorycrafting, etc. can be psychologically detrimental to the improvement of casual players. Pros make it look wonderfully easy, and when we can't reproduce that in our own games it frustrates us into not playing.
On the flipside, once you're more established in game mechanics and understanding I feel you can appreciate and learn from pro-play even more.
Again, I have to emphasize this blog post was not intended to hurt or offend anyone. My practice of hypothetically calling casual players "bitches" and "washed up old men" was all in good fun and tough love exercise. I hope you recognize that this is the proper forum to, as one critic said, project my own goals and ideals on the community. And I thank you for listening.
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When builds and counters and such aren't fleshed out welI, such as in the beta, early after the release, or after big patches, spending the time on the forums, on streams, and working on knowledge of the new mechanics is invaluable. What upgrades will allow you to reduce the number of hits it takes to kill zerglings? How many marines can a void ray take on by itself uncharged? Charged? Can SCVs repair vehicles inside a dropship? Is it optimal to build extra command centers just for mules/scv production? If you make a lot of unit (x), what other units can you make to supplement that army? This is stuff that you can learn WAAAAY faster through streams, forums, etc. rather than through mass laddering.
For those purposes, I think every aspiring pro-gamer should spend all the time they can on the forums figuring this stuff out - it allows you to learn more from your actual ladder games, and make proper corrections/improvements to your builds. In fact, I spent a whole bunch of time on forums/theory-crafting because by developing and discussing strategies and tactics, you really understand why they work, what the weaknesses are, what the purpose is, etc. better than if you just copied it from an online forum and then played it over and over on the ladder. I have probably only played 200 ladder games of SC2 since the beta, yet I have 2 accounts in masters ,one as a zerg and one as a protoss. This should be evidence that at least in some circumstances, mass games are not more productive than quality, well-thought-out games that are supplemented by forum discussions and streams. (although i never really watched the TL live-streams, far better to download a white-ra replay pack or something)
For mechanics, you're right you definitely have to practice a bunch. You have to be able to implement what you think of. And now that so many solid builds are available online, you can probably just take the academic shortcut and copy someone else's build and just work on your mechanics. But at the end of the day, you don't need particularly good mechanics to do really well in SC2. My mechanics are terrible (APM at the end of my games is usually 70 or 80 if it lasts into the late game, between 60-70 if it ends in the first 15 minutes), and that is apparently good enough for masters if you put some thought and preparation into how you play.
If we break it down into two styles, there is the mechanics style learned from spending time mass-laddering, and there is the academic style (nestea style?) which is learned from watching replays, talking on forums, watching GSL, MLG, and theory-crafting. You need some combination of both styles to succeed. SC:BW certainly lends itself well to the mechanics style: the mechanics skill-cap is so high that if you can raise your apm to 150+, it doesn't really matter how thoughtful your 60apm opponent is. But the same does not hold true in SC2. A high APM certainly helps, but you can do a lot more with a lower apm than you could in BW, and for that reason I think a larger emphasis should be placed on the academic side of SC2 training than what you experienced in your BW laddering experience.
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On June 14 2011 02:01 Gnial wrote:
I have probably only played 200 ladder games of SC2 since the beta, yet I have 2 accounts in masters ,one as a zerg and one as a protoss. This should be evidence that at least in some circumstances, mass games are not more productive than quality, well-thought-out games that are supplemented by forum discussions and streams.
Thanks for your input.
You do need both brains and braun, but shouldn't actual playing come first? Playing the game, even mass-gaming, doesn't mean you're only working on mechanics. You can flesh out strategies on your own too.
Forum discussions, streams, and replays are good supplements. However, there's no denying people rely on them too much, or use them as a justification for lack of gametime. Look at the number of strategy-question threads started by bronze-platinum users - a lot of them aren't legitimate concerns because often the heart of the problem is their macro is awful.
Also, I have ~130 APM and I'm high diamond. Do you have 70 APM as a Masters zerg? If so, teach me!
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On June 14 2011 04:11 Nairul wrote:Show nested quote +On June 14 2011 02:01 Gnial wrote:
I have probably only played 200 ladder games of SC2 since the beta, yet I have 2 accounts in masters ,one as a zerg and one as a protoss. This should be evidence that at least in some circumstances, mass games are not more productive than quality, well-thought-out games that are supplemented by forum discussions and streams. Thanks for your input. You do need both brains and braun, but shouldn't actual playing come first? Playing the game, even mass-gaming, doesn't mean you're only working on mechanics. You can flesh out strategies on your own too. Forum discussions, streams, and replays are good supplements. However, there's no denying people rely on them too much, or use them as a justification for lack of gametime. Look at the number of strategy-question threads started by bronze-platinum users - a lot of them aren't legitimate concerns because often the heart of the problem is their macro is awful. Also, I have ~130 APM and I'm high diamond. Do you have 70 APM as a Masters zerg? If so, teach me!
Hehe my APM figures are for protoss, I'm not actually sure if my APM goes up for zerg - I would assume it would be in the same ballpark, but a little higher. Toss definitely requires less APM.
I was a T and P player for a while and was really, really familiar with T and P timings, and being able to identify what was coming in advance. I'm not sure whether the most time efficient way to learn those timings as a Z player is to play T/P and study T/P build orders, or whether you should just learn it from the Z perspective through playing games.
You're right, you definitely need to play some ladder games to flesh out your strategies, and to learn about counters you may not have thought of. I mean, just to get comfortable with the timings you need to play the builds a few times.
I think the way I read your suggestion, you are probably leaning a little too far towards the "playing lots of ladder games" side just based on your history playing starcraft and your mechanics related to your ladder rank. On the flip side, you have highlighted how it is definitely possible to lean too far to the academic side as well, and watching videos certainly doesn't help people get over playing anxiety. Ideally, you want to optimize your time spent doing both so that your improvement / time is maximized. Some people like to combine both styles, watching the replay after each loss. I really don't like doing that. I prefer to dedicate an hour or two, after dinner or whenever, to go over replays that something unexpected happened, and go over pro replays, all in one big go.
Whatever style you feel works the best, and however you structure it, at the end of the day you have to dedicate a lot of time to it no matter which method you use.
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EPT
