EPTThe Gold League Struggle - Page 2
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UltimateHurl
Ireland591 Posts
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IvoryOwl
United States6 Posts
I am in gold league. I watch Day9, Mr. Bitter and get PROFESSIONAL coaching. Nonetheless, still in gold league. Meanwhile, I ask master leaguers how they got to be Master league and all they say is, "don't suck" and then say say they were originally placed in diamond, which is extremely discouraging to hear. I think what may help is an exhaustive list of things to improve. Then EVERY game, just try to improve on only ONE thing, and do this EVERY game. It's what I like to call the Benjamin Franklin method of improvement (I will explain why I would call it that if anybody is interested). | ||
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HydraLF
Hong Kong626 Posts
I think people in lower leagues really have a tough time maintainin their macro off 3-4 base, I think this is mostly down to lack of practice, stuff become second nature the mote you do it, which will ultimately improve your apm and macro in general because you don't have to think as much. The thing I like to do is to play against AI to practice opener and macro so I don't get disturbed by cheese and drops, practice until you are confident enough to try them against real people. Watching streams (I mainly follow gsl and MLG only) will help you improve your game sense and keep you up to date with the current trend of strategy/unit composition. | ||
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Servius_Fulvius
United States947 Posts
On July 31 2011 06:07 IvoryOwl wrote: I am very glad to see this post, since I'm in the same situation. I am in gold league. I watch Day9, Mr. Bitter and get PROFESSIONAL coaching. Nonetheless, still in gold league. Meanwhile, I ask master leaguers how they got to be Master league and all they say is, "don't suck" and then say say they were originally placed in diamond, which is extremely discouraging to hear. I think what may help is an exhaustive list of things to improve. Then EVERY game, just try to improve on only ONE thing, and do this EVERY game. It's what I like to call the Benjamin Franklin method of improvement (I will explain why I would call it that if anybody is interested). This has inspired me to post in this thread again. Though, I got promoted to plat at the season change! Improvement is a long and difficult process and you're fooling yourself if you think it happens overnight. A masters league player who tells you not to suck or, my personal favorite, "macro and you'll get to diamond in no time", don't really know what they're talking about. Every gamer experiences a plateau in skill, be it in gold league or masters league. At some point all your practice doesn't seem to pay off anymore and despite all your improvements you're still in the same spot. There's no magic formula that says "do this and you will get better". There are helpful suggestions, some of which may work for you, but everyone learns differently and some learn quicker than others. So you've been in gold league for an incredibly long time? Sorry to hear about that, but it doesn't mean you suck so much at the game you need to immediately quit. When I played BW I was D-ranked for over a year. All I needed was a 33% win ratio on my personal choice of maps, and it still took an entire year. My mechanics certainly improved (went from 60 APM to 140), but the biggest change was my execution and how I thought about the game. It took me 150 games to get out of gold league, but thanks to the year of BW my APM was typically two-three times that of my opponents (140-150), I know how I personally improve, and I'm playing some good strategies. If you're just starting, or haven't been playing RTS's long, then it's going to take a long time to learn how everything works. You can practice and improve all you want, but what's most important is consistency over a long period of time. | ||
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Blazinghand
United States25553 Posts
On July 21 2011 11:07 Clbull wrote: However, I am feeling very demotivated and am tempted to discontinue the series. The reason is that after almost 8 months of playing the game somewhat regularly.(about 1 to 3 hours a day or several matches daily), I don't feel like I am improving at all. Yes, I may have ended Season 1 with a Rank 1 Bronze League status but almost everybody else in my division was somewhat less active and I exceeded them by about 1,300 ladder points despite having a Bonus Pool of 300 left by the time Season 2 started. However, since then, it took me another fifty games before I got my Silver promotion and another few hundred games over the space of about 8 weeks to finally get my Gold promotion, and this was after many ups and downs. What have I realistically managed to do in the last few months? Well in my personal opinion, all I've really managed was:
I'm not sure that playing a few matches daily is enough to really have the impact you're looking for. Put in perspective, gold league is a fairly respectable level of play-- it means you have a lot of the fundamental, basic mechanics down and usually have a game plan of some sort. I think that's where you can expect to get by playing about an hour a day, especially if you switch races a lot and don't review your replays. Getting beyond Gold league, for any player, requires more than that. In addition to refining your mechanics and strategies, you need excellent crisis management skills: being able to scout/stop cannon rush, marine scv allin, baneling bust, roach rush, quick DTs, etc. A lot of this just comes with experience, but the best way to get experience and maximize the utility of your time is to watch every replay you lose in, no matter what. Realistically, you don't need to watch EVERY replay you lose in. If it's a 4gate vs 4gate situation and you get minorly outmicroed, go down a stalker, and end up losing as a result, it's obvious how you lost. But most replays, even ones where you got cheesed, you should watch through the replay 2 times. The first time, watch through it at 2-4x speed and get an idea for what happened. When were the major pushes? What was the food count throughout the game? When did he tech, and when did I tech? When did we expand, relative to each other? Who had more workers and income throughout the game? Get an idea for the big picture. Then, go through it at 1x speed, or even on Normal if you want. Constantly switch between the Everyone Camera and the You Camera, and think "what was I doing at this point? What had I scouted, and what did I think he had? what did he really have? what was my plan, and how did it interact with his? How did he surprise me / survive my attack / get DTs into my base before i had a raven?" Critically analyze what happened, and how it looked from your limited information as it happened, and how you could have seen it coming. It's really, really important to do this. Even if you BM the guy and ragequit, don't let that shame you out of watching your replay, which could lead to you being a better player. Lastly, if you have some free time you don't want to game in but want to learn about sc2, I'd recommend watching day[9]s shows on how to be a better gamer. They helped me immensely. In Summary, here's what I think is holding you back: 1) Race Switching -- this makes it like, 3x as hard to learn the game. 2) Replay Review -- you need to review your replays or it will be incredibly hard to get better. Find out what went wrong, and try to fix it. 3) Tilt -- It sounds like you go on losing streaks due to being upset, losing games to crappy tactics, etc. and this causes you to also switch races and not review your replays. I think tilt is the real underlying problem that's holding you back, and causing your other problems. From now on, at the start of every game, hit F11 and block your opponent's messages. If you want, you may say "gl hf" at the start of every game, and "gg" at the end but say NOTHING ELSE. You won't be able to read his messages, and he won't be able to tell, and there will be no raging / bm on either side this way. You'll feel much more at peace, and you'll be able to watch the replays and improve your game and stick to a plan much better. ---- On July 21 2011 11:55 D_K_night wrote:I've been stuck in plat league myself and no matter how much I play or try, it just doesn't matter - it's a "plat forever" situation where I'm fighting anywhere from gold - diamond players. I'm quite simply losing interest in the game. When you're up against a brick wall and the level of skill that you need to grow by, is leaps and bounds away - the game is simply no longer fun anymore. It becomes a game which is frustrating, unrewarding, and stressful. For a few months the only game I played - was Starcraft 2, nothing else. Now I'm beginning to go back to other games which make me burst out laughing when I die, and cheer when I succeed. Instead of the gradual grind which leads to defeat, causing you to berate yourself, the psychological impact of losing more points than you're gaining - at this point now I'm just a casual observer of pro-level games. I no longer feel I must at least be somewhere near their level to be taken seriously. I simply no longer care. I just want to play a game, and have fun. 1) What league you're in doesn't matter. I don't know if I can stress this enough-- the only thing that's important is that your MMR is such that you're up against opponents of your level. 2) You will always, always be up against the brick wall in starcraft 2. If, at any point, you are not up against that brick wall where you lose half of your games, your MMR will rise until you hit that wall. That wall is the "your MMR is accurate" wall, and it's where you want to be-- on the interface between what you have been, and what you will be. 3) Don't feel like you need to get into Diamond League or Master league. If that's what's fun for you, that's fine-- but maybe instead it's just fun to practice and improve and play without regards to what league you're in, or you want to be in. ---- On July 31 2011 06:07 IvoryOwl wrote: I am very glad to see this post, since I'm in the same situation. I am in gold league. I watch Day9, Mr. Bitter and get PROFESSIONAL coaching. Nonetheless, still in gold league. Meanwhile, I ask master leaguers how they got to be Master league and all they say is, "don't suck" and then say say they were originally placed in diamond, which is extremely discouraging to hear. I think what may help is an exhaustive list of things to improve. Then EVERY game, just try to improve on only ONE thing, and do this EVERY game. It's what I like to call the Benjamin Franklin method of improvement (I will explain why I would call it that if anybody is interested). It's not easy to improve. If it were, then everyone would do it too, and I'd be saying "It's not easy to improve faster than everyone else." Because Sc2 is fundamentally a competitive game, it's always hard, no matter how good you are, your opponents are as good as you-- and that's okay. Don't listen to people who hate, because a lot of people forget what it's like to not be in Master league. I too was in gold league for months and months, from the Beta all the way through last fall, and I couldn't improve, or I couldn't improve quicker than everyone else was. Eventually, I found a practice regimen that let me really refine my game-- it was a step by step process, and it went like this:
Although it's time-intensive, it's also the most time-efficient. You can spread this across several days, but it's important to grind games and focus on specific elements of your play to improve quickly without mass gaming for hours and hours each day. | ||
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