Hey everyone. I'm a long time lurker and infrequent poster here on TL. Although I don't generally get bothered by things over the internet, there are a few pet peeves I have on the forums that really annoy me.
Talking too much about your ranking/supposed ranking
It doesn't matter what type of thread it's in, it happens in almost all of them. Someone is asking for ZvP help, and they describe themselves as "a low platinum league player, but i consistently beat mid-high diamonds and sometimes low masters." Or someone is giving an advice in a [H] thread, and introduce themselves as "Mid ranked gold terran, but I think my MMR is much higher. I beat low-mid plat players every day!"
No. Just no. Please shut up. First of all, you types are way too obsessive with checking your opponents ranking. I realize it's a decent measuring stick, but to make a statement like this, you have to be checking almost all of your opponents ranks after the match, otherwise it has no validity. Even then, it doesn't really matter if you are gold and beat platinum players, as MMR is constantly changing. You are gold because you are more or less 50% against gold, sometimes beat players of higher leagues, and sometimes lose to players of lower leagues. End of story.
Orgasmic posts of glee
I might be starting to sound like a cynic, but that's alright with me. So I open a thread where a new league is starting up with a huge prizepool, or some BW gosu is switching over to SC2. First 100 or so posts are all along the lines of; "OMG AMAZING!!!!1," "WOW NICE," and "I THINK I JUST CREAMED MY PANTIES OMGOMGOGM." I understand the excitement, but what does this really add to the topic? I have to sift through so much shit if I actually want to read decent responses that discuss or add content to the OP. Every day, posters are warned for shitty, one line no content posts like "lol," and "u mad bro?" and yet posts like these aren't even thought twice about. I don't really care if that changes, I just think it's silly.
Giving advice when you are bad
I'm sorry, but let's face at reality. Most of us suck at Sc2 (and for that matter, BW as well, but this happens way more often in the Sc2 forums). Usually when you are bad at something, you aren't able to give good advice pertaining to that thing. Yet every time I open a help thread, I see countless posts that give bad and misleading advice. This advice usually comes from the lower league players trying to be helpful, but it isn't entirely limited to this group. For the lower level players, please get better before you try to give advice. Or at least become knowledgeable by watching high level streams, leagues, and casts. These days, the strategy forums are more or less unreadable due to people like you clogging up every topic with your nonsensical, and sometimes outright false "advice."
Well, I think that about covers it for today. I'd like to hear whether or not you disagree with me, even though it's mostly irrelevant as it's all opinion. Thank you and have a nice day!
OMG, AWESOME!!!11!!1! This blog actually sums up quite a few things that annoy me somewhat in the forums as well.
Though, as a high-level Platinum player who normally played and beat diamonds, I think some low level players actually could give decent advice. For example, making infestors as a first tech choice at lair is viable in every situation and all match-ups.
Lol if you think those things annoy drop past any other forum and realise just how bad it can be :p sometimes threads do turn into emotional sounding boards but at the end of the day HOLY SHIT THIS IS AMAZING is a pretty good way to describe Yellow transitioning to SC2.
Anyway, 2 of your complaints surface in the strategy forum where there is a huge effort to clean it up by zatic, sara etc so have no fear :p
The best way to overcome all this is to set an example with stellar posts =D
A personal peeve of mine is when someone barely reaches a rank and claims to be that solid rank. Reaching C with 100-200 record 4005 points and goes around(because this is relatively high nowadays with less posters) and using that to 'validate', often incorrect information.
Also the, "progamers don't do it so d- players shouldn't" argument.
My biggest pet peeve are people who make live report threads KNOWING that they won't be able to update it. They might be going out or might have to study or something but they make the damn live report thread anyway.... Boggles ze mind.
On August 10 2011 12:06 Warrior Madness wrote: My biggest pet peeve are people who make live report threads KNOWING that they won't be able to update it. They might be going out or might have to study or something but they make the damn live report thread anyway.... Boggles ze mind.
This is up there for me too. Unless something horribly unexpected occurs it's quite unacceptable.
Yeah that first thing pisses me off more than I'd care to describe. I fucking hate it when I read the words "I'm in platinum but I should be in masters" or any form of it.
I used to be in plat, stuck, literally playing top 8 diamond and masters. I didn't qualify my advice by saying #1 plat/should be in.. No. I openly said platinum and if I was giving good advice what happens? People agree with me a lot more than people flame me for not being a 9001 point master.
-_-
I had more to say but another blog has me thinking about Age of Empires and I'm out of here.
The whole 'im x but i constantly get matched against y so i should be ranked z' posts are the ones that bother me moreso then anything, other than that nothing really irks me on these forums.
I usually read LR threads viewing 'all' instead of by pages, so when the 'OMG' and 'AMAZING' posts come up its kinda fun to see exactly how much hype something got.
On August 10 2011 11:37 lizzuma wrote: Talking too much about your ranking/supposed ranking
It doesn't matter what type of thread it's in, it happens in almost all of them. Someone is asking for ZvP help, and they describe themselves as "a low platinum league player, but i consistently beat mid-high diamonds and sometimes low masters." Or someone is giving an advice in a [H] thread, and introduce themselves as "Mid ranked gold terran, but I think my MMR is much higher. I beat low-mid plat players every day!"
No. Just no. Please shut up. First of all, you types are way too obsessive with checking your opponents ranking. I realize it's a decent measuring stick, but to make a statement like this, you have to be checking almost all of your opponents ranks after the match, otherwise it has no validity. Even then, it doesn't really matter if you are gold and beat platinum players, as MMR is constantly changing. You are gold because you are more or less 50% against gold, sometimes beat players of higher leagues, and sometimes lose to players of lower leagues. End of story.
I agree completely. Just because you're a high rank doesn't mean people should think your advice is good, it means that your advice should be good and speak for itself. I mean Saracen doesn't go saying how good he is when he gives advice, why do people that are worse think that they are obligated to inform the world of their greatness? [/rant]
1. People saying they're "high/medium/low" anything other than masters/gm. This coupled with the infamous "Diamond/Masters" are an instant red flag that you have delusions of grandeur in terms of how good you are and any contrary opinions to what you say are going to be vehemently refuted.
2. People naming builds after themselves. I wrote a blog a long time ago about this, but the upshot of what I said was is that we can see that you made the post and unless you're revolutionizing a matchup with it it only serves to boost your ego. Examples of builds that really could be named after people (in SC2, obviously the bisu build in SC1) would be iEchoic TvT and Spanishiwa's ZvX, considering that they took a hold at the pro level (albeit temporarily for both). This especially is annoying when what is posted is standard with one minor tweak.
3. People trashing/judging people based on post count, when longevity is more important. Anyone can spam LR threads for 1000 posts a week, but it's people who have been around for a while and that have contributed to the community for a good period of time that is more important. Obviously post quality reigns supreme but it's hard to look at someone's profile and tell whether or not they are a good poster.
The last point was a lot of bias because I have an extremely low post/time here ratio, so take it with a grain of salt
4. People trashing progamers/casters. These people put their lives into the game, preparing and practicing, and even those that don't now worked their asses off in order to better themselves in the past. Show some damn respect.
5. Backseat moderating. It's actually against the rules on TL, but for good reason. Saying things like "this post contributes nothing", "mods should lock this thread", et al. are making decisions mods are supposed to make, when in fact they are very competent at their jobs. If you really have a problem with a post, report it, or PM a mod that's online.
1. Unequal treatment of a variety of viewpoints (Trashing BW as a SC2 is fiercely moderated, but somehow shitting on SC2 isn't as.)
2. People playing internet rhetorician and pulling out words like 'red herring argument', 'strawman argument' and ad hominem. It's especially cute when they go through the trouble of defining it for you.
3. People using the funny pictures thread to post their half-ass editorials. There are countless 'funny pictures' that are crudely drawn cartoons with stick figures spouting various diatribes. Of course, you're not allowed to argue about them. I guess I'm supposed to find a spare paper napkin on which to compose a retort.
As a gold-diamond forum poster, I approve this message.
Edit: Instead of trolling I probably should point out that Team Liquid forums are far more respectable than say... mmo-champion.com forums for WoW, and don't even bother visiting the heroes of newerth forums.
On August 10 2011 11:37 lizzuma wrote: Talking too much about your ranking/supposed ranking
It doesn't matter what type of thread it's in, it happens in almost all of them. Someone is asking for ZvP help, and they describe themselves as "a low platinum league player, but i consistently beat mid-high diamonds and sometimes low masters." Or someone is giving an advice in a [H] thread, and introduce themselves as "Mid ranked gold terran, but I think my MMR is much higher. I beat low-mid plat players every day!"
Yes. It's basically like saying "I have 3 inches of a dick, but I can fuck someone who has 10 inches of a dick in the ass".
It basically doesn't change the fact that the guy has a pathetic 3 inches of a dick and posting this itself is basically pointless.
On August 10 2011 13:20 Sc1pio wrote: 2. People naming builds after themselves. I wrote a blog a long time ago about this, but the upshot of what I said was is that we can see that you made the post and unless you're revolutionizing a matchup with it it only serves to boost your ego. Examples of builds that really could be named after people (in SC2, obviously the bisu build in SC1) would be iEchoic TvT and Spanishiwa's ZvX, considering that they took a hold at the pro level (albeit temporarily for both). This especially is annoying when what is posted is standard with one minor tweak..
You're right at everything except the thing about Spanishiwa. It's a universal fact that no gas ZvX is Spanishiwa style, and I even heard Gisado calling it so (when CrazymovING did that against Lof clan in Gisado Clan #1). But iEchoic TvT or Griffith's 4 orbital blah blah blah or anything of that sort, which includes Wolf's builds that he used before beta came out or modified Tasteless builds.
1). Help blogs where you ignore the help, particularly girl blogs. Don't get me wrong, I get as much guilty pleasure out of girl blogs as everyone else and I KNOW I give great advice in them. What drives me up a wall are when the OP tries to argue with what everyone is telling them. Most of the time, solving your issue involves a mature attitude combined with action. When 20 people are telling you to take action and you start making excuses then you don't deserve the help!
2). "All you need is macro to get out of the lower leagues". It drives lower league players crazy to hear this! "But why, that's pretty good advice" one might say. Actually it's not. "Macro" is a loaded term that encompasses constant worker production, timely expansions, creating unit-producing structures, making units, mules, chrono, injects, worker saturation, making units during battles, keeping money low, and much more. Each one of these aspects needs a lot of attention and development from a lower league player. Saying "you just need to macro better" is almost useless - BE MORE SPECIFIC! What is more helpful: saying you need to work on macro, or telling someone they need to keep producing workers after their expansion finishes?
This also closely relates to the higher level players that decided to prove a point by getting a low-level guest account and doing nothing but macro and a-moving. A protoss guy posted this on reddit in Feb. and Destiny has a youtube series. The toss goes mass stalkers; Destiny goes mass queens. While it is neat to see that they were promoted several leagues with "just macro", we also need to understand that they have trained themselves with all the fundamentals I mentioned earlier. A lower level player does not have this kind of training. Hell, I'm a platinum zerg and stomp players with my bronze 4v4 team with ridiculous compositions held together by "passable" macro. Anyway, the part that bothers me isn't that the players conducted these tests, but that others are reading too much into the results. Put it in perspective: both of them had masters level mechanics and experience, they did not win every game, and they hit a point where the strategy stopped working proving that at around the plat/diamond cusp "just macro" isn't enough. I'm not saying that developing each aspect of macro isn't important - it is INCREDIBLY important, but developing good scouting and basic micro and hotkey setups are simple tasks that should be on every lower league player's "to do" list.
Decent blog post, there has been a couple similar ones lately and I'm happy to see that people are speaking out about a few common issues here.
I agree with the OP for the most part - far too many posts related to SC2 (not restricted to the SC2 forums) begin with "I'm rank X and let me tell you this, ..." Yes it's supposed to add credibility/authority to the post, but 1) people generally don't care and 2) it actually doesn't add much to the credibility/authority at the end (especially if the content that follows is garbage).
Regrettably, I am usually a part of the orgasmic glee crowd. I am guilty of spamming JANGBANG or STORK MARRY ME <333333 whenever I find appropriate (sadly, not too often in the past year). There are some places more appropriate for this than others (I think going OMG GG CRAZY MICRO in LR threads are acceptable, probably not in strategy discussion or news sections).
Upon reading some of the comments here, I want to also comment on the post count and join date issue. It's true people can "1a2a3a" their post counts up in LR threads (spamming those all-caps one-liners I demonstrated above). However, if you check the automated bans thread, you can see that mods do look at posting history when judging the yes/no or severity of the ban. People with higher post counts are more likely (but not always) to have survived because they tend to make better quality posts (or at least, good enough to be not reported and banned). Still, there are always exceptions (like Roffles =P).
On August 10 2011 13:20 Sc1pio wrote: 2. People naming builds after themselves. I wrote a blog a long time ago about this, but the upshot of what I said was is that we can see that you made the post and unless you're revolutionizing a matchup with it it only serves to boost your ego. Examples of builds that really could be named after people (in SC2, obviously the bisu build in SC1) would be iEchoic TvT and Spanishiwa's ZvX, considering that they took a hold at the pro level (albeit temporarily for both). This especially is annoying when what is posted is standard with one minor tweak..
You're right at everything except the thing about Spanishiwa. It's a universal fact that no gas ZvX is Spanishiwa style, and I even heard Gisado calling it so (when CrazymovING did that against Lof clan in Gisado Clan #1). But iEchoic TvT or Griffith's 4 orbital blah blah blah or anything of that sort, which includes Wolf's builds that he used before beta came out or modified Tasteless builds.
If you read I actually said that both of those were okay to be named that way, and iEchoic is fine because hellion/pure air is still referred to as iEchoic style (even though nobody uses it anymore).
Holy shit I cannot stand it when people say shit like "haha I like how all the koreans are using the iEchoic build now!!" cause they're just so clueless. A lot of people that comment on balance and shit don't seem to know anything about the game, especially in LR threads. Whenever I hear something like "carriers need buffs because protoss is weak right now" I sort of want to stop visiting the forum. And then they have the audacity to criticize people like wolf on protoss builds when he's 20x better than they are.
On August 10 2011 13:20 Sc1pio wrote: 2. People naming builds after themselves. I wrote a blog a long time ago about this, but the upshot of what I said was is that we can see that you made the post and unless you're revolutionizing a matchup with it it only serves to boost your ego. Examples of builds that really could be named after people (in SC2, obviously the bisu build in SC1) would be iEchoic TvT and Spanishiwa's ZvX, considering that they took a hold at the pro level (albeit temporarily for both). This especially is annoying when what is posted is standard with one minor tweak..
You're right at everything except the thing about Spanishiwa. It's a universal fact that no gas ZvX is Spanishiwa style, and I even heard Gisado calling it so (when CrazymovING did that against Lof clan in Gisado Clan #1). But iEchoic TvT or Griffith's 4 orbital blah blah blah or anything of that sort, which includes Wolf's builds that he used before beta came out or modified Tasteless builds.
If you read I actually said that both of those were okay to be named that way, and iEchoic is fine because hellion/pure air is still referred to as iEchoic style (even though nobody uses it anymore).
Aww shit there goes my "NoobStyles 6pool" thread i was going to make, now how the fuck am I going to get e-famous??
Im basically in agreement with all 3 of the OP pet peeves.
Ill add my own spin off on points 1/3 people that are in bronze and decide they've spend 10,000 hours watching ppl stream and now their game knowledge similar is that of GSL code S finalist. So they try and coach people.
Actually generally people that never play but watch streams all the time piss me off a little.
#1: starcraft = stacraft 1. sc = starcraft 1. sc2 needs a 2 to distinguish it. I mean, in the sc2 forums I don't get as mad/depressed at people saying "starcraft" because if you're in a sc2 tourney live report thread or sc2 forum it's assumed you're going to talk about sc2.
but when people write blogs/talk in the general forum and only use "starcraft" when they mean sc2 I want to fucking kill them.
#2: people in live report threads sometimes ask "can someone update me on the results so far?". Normally they're in the fucking OP. that's what a live report thread is.
#3: when people either explicitly or implicitly say things like "why doesn't [insert top brood war player] just switch to sc2 already? HE'D BE SO GOOD OMMGGGG". I understand some people might legitimately "dream" of seeing top brood war players (bisu, flash, jaedong, stork, fantasy, etc) play sc2 someday, but I think if that ever does happen it should occur like july/nada/boxer where they already were fading out a bit in the bw pro scene, or said they were growing tired of bw (mvp has said this some)
the people who express the sentiment that brood war players should "just switch already" are basically expressing the sentiment of some sc2 fans where they say "brood war is an outdated game/dead" except more subtle. I want to kill both those type of people. If a major sc player switched to sc2 at prime of their career I would cry in the corner for days, not be excited.
#4: people who love Boxer/old veterans for no reason. I didn't come to watch the bw pro scene until like jan 2008 and that was already well past Boxer's top championship performances (he had good games afterwards but he wasn't a champion); I respect what he did, I enjoy his play, but I'm not going to auto-liquibet him to win just because he is the emperor (as people do "ofc he will win, he's the emperor!"). And now its fucking 2011, people who never watched bw should be even less attached to boxer as "the emperor" than I am yet they aren't. Same thing with any sc2 fans that are acting like they are creaming their pants because yellow is playing some.
EPT
